Winning by deception

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

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

Editorial: Please, we're desperate

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

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

-- bolster the economy
Ditto.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A good place to start

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

The state of print advertising

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

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

I love this

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

Babeu update: The feeding frenzy begins

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

Editorial: Hold your nose and vote

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

Editorial: Allow high-achieving students to learn already

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

About that $4 gasoline

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

Editorial: GOP candidates crack crooked

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

Not much of a photographer, either.

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

Cantlon: Garbage in, garbage out

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

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

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

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

Editorial: So now you're sick of campaigns

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

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

Sincere, innocent bungling will hamper public-art policy

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

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

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

Editorial: Hang 'em high

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

Tell me how this improves anything.

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

Doing my job for me

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

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

Couldn'ta said it better.

Cantlon: Occupy redistricting!

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

Tree, meet forest

In today's opinion headline the unnamed Courier editor exhorts us all to "Hang up, or a law will tell you to," but as his thesis he seems to have cast a handful of random thoughts into the air and printed them as they fell.
   He is of course referring to today's public irritant du jour, the cellphone, and the threat that our clown-car Legislature may pass one of various flavors of law against using one while driving. He cites statistics, then says the statistics don't matter. He recognizes that there are all sorts of distractions that can cause driving hazards, then refocuses on cellphones as somehow exceptional, without an argument to support the idea. Overall he seems to berate the reader to be responsible to prevent a new "restriction on our freedoms," one of which is presumably the freedom to talk on the phone while driving.
   As usual, it's not seeing the forest for the trees. From the perspective of everyone outside that car, it's not the cellphone that's the problem, it's the driver's distraction. Neither the bills' sponsors nor the editor apparently understand that we already have a law in place providing a substantial penalty for distracted driving. There's simply no point making more. This is another case of lawmakers (and the editor) jumping up and down over their pet peeves and skipping their homework.
   This kind of reactionism isn't new or unusual, of course. What's instructive here is that in exercising his knee reflex, the editor demonstrates the helpless simplicity of shouting at traffic. The irresponsible minority will never hear a message like this, addressed to another minority, antiques like me who still read newspaper op-ed pages. People distract themselves while driving because they don't take driving seriously. For this minority, it takes direct acquaintance with serious danger and physical consequences to provide the wake-up call, not laws and not op-eds.

Editorial: Moral obligations outweigh logistics

CVFD: Should we stay or should we go?

In discussing the awful story of a rural house burning down while the nearest fire department refused to respond because the homeowners hadn't paid for the service, the unnamed editor seems to say that "moral obligations," as he puts it in his headline, should stand above the few bucks involved, and that's good. But he says it in such a mealy-mouthed way that the editorial seems to have a foot on either side of the fence.
   This situation has come up several times since I've lived in Prescott, it always makes the non-responding organization look bad, and nothing changes, because it's accepted that the homeowners didn't pay, therefore they accepted the risk of losing their homes. Fire resources have to be reserved for those who pay.
   But consider this: CVFD is saying that it could have responded if the homeowner had paid, so the only real logistical difference between a saved house and cinder pile is a few bucks in the district's bank account.
   The editor's sadly muffled point is that if you have the ability to help, you have the responsibility to help. That makes a lot of sense to me. Either the fire crews can or cannot reach the scene and be effective, and if they can, their own organizational mission should require that they try. People get this instinctively. When larger-scale catastrophes occur, fire crews will transport out of state to help. It makes no sense that they can't respond to a fire at this house when they can to one a quarter mile farther down the same road.
   The core problem that the editor seems afraid to touch is the subscription system, which favors those who are more able to pay. This really needs to go, and rural communities have to start thinking in more inclusive terms than who's willing to put up twenty bucks a month. The system as it stands clearly does not work.

Update, Monday:  The CVFD chief responds in this Sunday story, but the focus remains entirely on the finances and resources and off the mission. The comments add some pertinent details, such as how close the house was to the district line.

The wagging-finger story

The now-famous pic of Governor Brewer wagging her finger in the President's face is clearly overhyped on both sides of the political spectrum and another case of the media leaping on events that reinforce the preferred narrative, whether or not the facts support it. But when there are actual lies involved, we have to pay attention.
   Paul Davenport's AP story, carried in today's print edition on 9A, repeats Brewer's assertion that Obama "walked away" from her while she was in the middle of a sentence. The White House responded to this with dismissal, but no apparent denial. Not widely reported is the account of Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, who was there and says that it didn't happen that way at all.

Out to lunch for the weekend

Remarkably incoherent even for the Courier, today's editorial had my head spinning trying to parse the unnamed editor's carnival-ride argument, in which he attempts to paint the President as a socialist for -- get this -- deporting illegals.
   He starts out with standard right-wing magical thinking, identifying "to close or control the border" as an "easy answer." He then advocates a "contrarian approach" that he never gets around to describing.
   Then he goes right off the rails, claiming without citation, "according to the Associated Press, President Barack Obama's fourth year in office will be the 12th consecutive year that Americans have lived under a socialistic, Big Government answer to immigration." Yup, he's saying that over two terms Bush the Younger followed a "socialistic" approach, and then Obama took it further.
   He explains with this whipsaw head-spinner: "Socialists like to control the workforce and the freedom to roam, so aggressive immigration policies come naturally."
   So it appears that the editor accidentally flipped the channel away from Fox News for a second and has discovered that the Obama administration has been deporting far more illegals than the Bushites, for all their yammering about the Brown Peril, ever got around to. The only way he can explain this to himself is to confuse socialism with authoritarianism.
   But then the crafty socialists switched strategies again, and it must be to win back those illegal voters, who were presumably thinking of supporting Newt. Ultimately the editor seems to like the change, but blames the Prez for playing politics with the issue.
   Here in the reality-based world, what happened is that the Obama administration came into office and immediately began working on practical policy to address the widespread fear the Republicans whipped up over nothing -- in other words, responding to a popular complaint with practical action. It focused on apprehending and deporting criminal aliens, reporting record numbers and putting the Bushites to shame. Regular non-criminal illegals were not a target in the federal plan, that was Arpaio, Babeu and their ilk. There's no new policy, only a restatement of what's already working and a PR connection with the Utah Compact, which has been gaining traction here as well. This is the part that the editor suddenly likes, because some Republicans have given him permission to like it.
   The editorial demonstrates in excruciating detail how a dedicated right-wing mind has to contort itself to approve of any action by a perceived adversary -- cramming square pegs into round holes, scrambling the timeline and finding any possible way to see it as objectionable.

And no, I can guarantee that the AP never said "Obama's fourth year in office will be the 12th consecutive year that Americans have lived under a socialistic, Big Government answer to immigration." Some wacko pundit sold as part of the AP suite may have said something like that, but ascribing it to a news source is completely wrong and a vile distortion.

Editorial: Anti-piracy bills

The unnamed editor gets it right, more or less, but about two weeks late. When we're talking about public policy in the making, you have to inform people while it's still possible for them to have a say in it. Reactive editorializing is useless here.

Wiederaenders: A little harmless brown-nosing

In his weekly "whatever" column, Courier editor Tim Wiederaenders can't help but leak some foamy effusion over getting a personal audience with our LD1 legislators, with an extra lick or two at the boots of Speaker Tobin for his "heck of a memory and ... his eye on the ball." The commenters are doing a good job identifying the sort of ball Mr Tobin has been eyeing, and all I need add is a Congressional desk in Washington.

Lest we forget

   While I understand the optics of getting us out from under the awful deal our Legislature (including the three Tim is praising here) made to pawn our state buildings -- and not incidentally eliminate it as an election issue -- I agree that we could be spending the money on higher priorities right now. (Thanks to the impressive negotiating powers of the Leg, the buyback will cost exactly the same at any point in the coming nine years or so.)
   But where Tim writes, "Said another way, instead of burning the mortgage on three state buildings this year, it would be better to, oh, provide healthcare for however many thousands of people through AHCCCS," I'm confident that he's going a lot further than Mr Tobin ever will. Andy's spending priority will be on more tax breaks for business, leaving health care for the working poor somewhere around dead last.

Must read: Obama's long game

Andrew Sullivan has a piece in Newsweek giving the view from 50,000 feet of Obama's first term and the great deal he's accomplished despite unrelenting vilification from the right and unrealistic expectations on the left. The election will keep us deep in the weeds for the coming ten months, so this is a good opportunity to take a breath and reassess: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

Editorial: Scared of the dark

Today the unnamed Courier editor hops up and down about the idea of cuts to the military. Apparently he missed how much we've spent and how little we've gained in warmaking over the past, oh, I dunno, six decades or so.
   We've all grown up as citizens of the American Empire, so it's no surprise that the editor is enthralled by the myths that have sustained it for so long. It's disappointing, however, that someone we depend on to understand public policy issues is so poorly educated in them.
   In our warmaking policy, the concept of "threat to national security" is defined so broadly that it can be stretched to justify military intervention in any economic dispute or ordinary criminal behavior. The underlying purpose of this is not security for Americans, but rather securing profits for warmaking corporations and votes for warmongering politicians. It is also a license for allies to spend their money on building social and business infrastructure instead of defense, thereby eating our lunch for us in business and quality of life, or worse, maintaining policies of aggression against their neighbors and even their own people.
   If we were to redefine "threat to national security" to sensible limits, such as "imminent military threat to the physical security of US persons or the territorial integrity of the US or treaty allies," we could obviously reduce our military commitments by 80% or more.
   This will not happen, as most Americans have bought into the editor's idea that we are under constant existential threat by dark forces everywhere, and our military policy is insane as a result. But what we learned in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that it never had anything like the capabilities or aggressive motivations that our government ascribed to it for so many years, ought to give everyone pause.
   We have a ridiculously big military not because there's any real threat, but rather because we are collectively frightened of our own shadow. It's time to grow up and get over it.

No-news Wednesday

I've been hearing lots of news of online content providers going dark on Wednesday, and I realized I'm an occasional provider as well, so I should get with the program. So Courierwatch will be offline on Wednesday as well, in solidarity. (I know, big whup.)
   The issue is the Stop Online Piracy Act and the new legal tools it would provide for censoring online content, as well as its scattershot, blame-the-messenger approach. Regular readers know I'm no fan of the Wild West online atmosphere so beloved of fourteen-year-olds, nor of taking intellectual works willy-nilly without paying for them, which is the baby in this bathwater. But Congress does not have this right, and protests are having some effect in forcing the bad guys to climb down. Again. (Hint: they won't ever quit.)

Update, 5pm Wednesday: Wow, I had no idea my readers are so influential! Support for SOPA crumbled in Congress today. Power to the people, man.


  Editorial: Stop Blaming Public Ed Big cookie for the unnamed Courier editor today as he lambastes the Legislature and parsimonious voters for defunding education and complaining about the results.
   This editorial shows progress in style as well as substance, moving past the forced folksiness of late to a more direct and real voice.
   He slips a bit where he tries a little too hard to distribute blame equally -- the schools don't decide how many days of instruction to provide, that's the Leg again.
   But the sentiment is correct. We can't go on with this regressive minstrel show. Education is far too serious an issue to play political games over. I might hope our legislators take this to heart, but let's say I have reason for doubt.

Must read: Half-Truths About the American Dream

Bob Lord has a fascinating think piece on Blog for Arizona about the millions of Americans who are left out of the conversation on economic justice even by the Left, and why it's important to expand our values beyond mere opportunity.

Worth your time: Half Truths About the American Dream

Everyone should know: Romney Owns Rush, et al.

Wouldn't it be weird if national opinion leaders owed their livings to a national political candidate?

Check it out: Bain Capital Owns Clear Channel (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Etc.)

Instructive historical example: William Randolph Hearst

You could see it another way as well -- if Romney's depending on Rush et al. for income, Rush owns Romney. Given Romney's demonstrated willingness to bow to idols of the far right that he clearly doesn't believe in, this may be the more salient angle.

Bill's back

Bill Moyers is returning to teevee tonight in most markets, and I expect a lot of us in the blue spectrum are looking forward to his committed, intelligent discussion and discourse on issues vital to our society. You'll be able to view the new show, Bill Moyers & Company, online starting tonight. Bookmark billmoyers.com.

Editorial: Showboats for Jesus

Who says Jews can't play football?

Regular readers know that I don't do sports and don't give a rat's behind about them, but the editorial today is but one example of how sports stories leak out into the adult media, so I've been aware of the sports idol of the week and his onfield antics.
   The unnamed editor deserves the rolling eyes he's getting today for his feigned puzzlement with religious showboatry. You'd have to be much thicker than I know the editor to be  to not get what's going on out there.
   The editor's supposedly parallel examples prove that Tim Tebow is an exception even as he asserts that his onfield prostrations are somehow normal. Greenberg and Koufax chose not to play -- stayed off the field -- humbly following the rules of their religion. In clear contrast, Muhammad Ali boasted of his religion as an expression of pride, and that's exactly what this silly quarterback is doing. You can't stand on a field with millions watching and pretend you're not playing to the crowd.
   The silliness of casting oneself as a warrior for gad while playing a child's game of mock combat is beyond laughable, and in a sane society might be properly diagnosed as a call for psychological help.
   But beyond the obvious pridefulness that somehow the editor doesn't get, these are expressions designed to include fellow devotees and exclude infidels, to separate the believer from nonbelievers. They are clear acts of culture war that break with our common traditions of sportsmanship and public decorum, which till now always cast such things as errors of taste at best. That's why they get attention, from the rabble and from the editor. This evangelical is in effect daring anyone to call him on his self-absorption, so he can bask in the glory of imagined persecution.
   The reader would be wise to bear in mind that commercial sports competitions are no more real than any other entertainment, and the characters you see are actors on stages, whether they're walking footlights or astroturf, scripted and directed. The play is metaphorical, the messages often subtle, and if you only look at the surface, you've wasted the price of your ticket.

Shocked, shocked!

The prurient finger-wagging going on over the Marines who were dumb enough to get caught wagging their extra fingers over some dead opponents (or victims) is pushing my ack-meter to the limit.

   Anyone involved in war on the ground knows firsthand that this is not aberrant behavior, it's common and always has been. How could it be otherwise? We train kids to be brutes, to kill, to hate whatever enemy is convenient today, yet we can't stand to see the brutal results. From the media to the pious government and military officials to Joe Six-Pack at the business end of his glass teat, it's hypocrisy of the highest order.
   What these kids are being pilloried for isn't what they did, but rather letting the folks back home find out about it in all its graphic ignominy. I'm sure this sort of behavior is no secret to the Afghans and Iraqis we've been routinely brutalizing for a decade.
   If we really hope to ensure that this doesn't happen anymore, our only choice is to get out of the war business, folks.

Editorial: Whaddaya expect?

The unnamed editor fuzzily reacts to recent examples of large corporations having to back down on boneheaded, tone-deaf attempts to wring a few more pennies out of their customers. Like the rest of the media, he misses the forest for the trees.

If you haven't seen "Network," do. Right away.

   I'm gratified to be able to note an unusual agreement with frequent commenter Tom Steele (who I know to be much more personable over coffee than in his writing), who gets an important piece of the truth when he writes, "it seems the link between top management and the real world has broken down." This is a lot of it, in a nutshell.
   The people who inhabit the top echelons of large corporations do not live in the same world that we do. The wealth that they take for granted does not allow ten bucks a month to matter, or even register as real. So when a bean-counter comes to the boss with a proposal to boost profits by .01% (and the value of their stockholdings by 2% = a couple million clams) by adding an insignificant fee, why not? Who would care?
   We 99%ers have historically accepted this sort of monetary paper cut without complaint. Have you thought about the fee breakdown on your phone bill or water bill lately? And whole industries have been able to successfully institute fees that most of us see as outrageous simply by acting as cartels. The airline fuel surcharges and baggage fees leap to mind. The top corporate dogs have been given every reason to think they can probably get away with this stuff.
   But it's not that corporate leadership is any further out of touch now than at any time in the past few decades. What's changed is that regular, normal people are finally reaching the limits of what they'll take without complaint. They've had enough, and they're not gonna take any more.
   Events like this encourage me to hope that the Occupy movement has moved from the streets into the popular consciousness. If we can now move beyond the I-me-my concerns of the individual purse to concern about how our society actually works, we'll be making real progress.

Missing letter

Odd: The letter from Alexandrea Horner about child sexualization is in the print edition, but not dCourier.com. Why, I wonder?

Editorial: What PV said

Today the unnamed Courier editor earns his second Barcalounger since the departure of Ben Hansen for a shameless puff piece for Prescott Valley in the editorial space, involving neither analysis, editorial opinion nor even a public issue. Waste of space.

Brewer vs medpot

A story by Phoenix state-beat reporter Paul Davenport in today's edition reports that Governor Brewer has been thrown out of court again in her attempt to establish that state workers are liable under federal law and so the state cannot license dispensaries for medical cannabis. A lot of commenters are throwing well deserved  heads of overripe cabbage at her for this, but there's another angle worth considering.

Brewer: "Triffids! Run!"

   The court is saying that the state has no standing to sue until it has credible evidence or threat of harm, and that rings true, but there's also no question that the federal gubmint really does not want a ruling on the core question, at least not yet.
   The eventual ruling on this question will turn either on a real case of a state worker being federally indicted for administering state law, which has not happened so far and seems vanishingly unlikely (unless Rick Santorum somehow wins), or on the clear absence of federal action against any state worker.
   If the latter proves out, and it seems likely to me, the federal courts will have said in essence that the feds have been doing the right thing and may not interfere with state laws in this regard. This will turn the issue over to the states, invalidate any federal policy on medpot, and open the door wide for more medpot programs and state regulation (and taxation) of cannabis.
   The unavoidable inconsistency of both federal and state laws regarding cannabis will eventually force the public to face the issue of broader legalization in a more practical context. California may pass its legalization initiative soon, which will put an accelerator on the process nationwide.
   So Governor Brewer, in her clumsy haste to stop medpot here, may be doing more to ensure its institution. Go, Jan!

Update, Jan 13: Damn, she dropped the suit!

Must read: Krugman nails it again

Before the Occupy movement stole the headlines, Americans heard a lot about how terrible it is to use debt to leverage our economy, create jobs and prime the economic pump. The headlines are behind us for the time being, but a lot of reasonable people have adopted concern about public debt. Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman speaks for the majority of real economists (as opposed to political economists) in continually trying to educate Americans about vital economic issues, and his current NYT column covers our common misconceptions about debt in a very informative way: Nobody Understands Debt

Editorial: Lessons in responsibility

Today the unnamed Courier editor references the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the killings of six others last year to make a responsible point about the tenor of our public discourse that encourages the weak-minded to radicalization and violence. This vital topic has been missing from these pages till now, and hear, hear.
   But there's one important element missing. The editor writes of "a political discourse that, while considered provocative for generations before, now takes vile viral. Previously-unheard of levels of amplified propaganda spread like wildfire via the Internet and 21st century social networks. Self-editing is a thing of the past. Untrue statements become permanent public record for billions to access in minutes. Scurrilous opinions become the information superhighway's proverbial red meat for an audience looking to radicalize their (sic) own ideologies."
    Yup, the trash talk the editor despises is only on the Internet. Not in the mainstream media, not in The Daily Courier. Not his fault.
    I'll be more convinced of the editor's sincerity when I see evidence that he's vetting the weekly right-wing rent-a-columns, ranting letters and his own editorials to eliminate the lies, distortions and hate speech that fuel resentment, bigotry and intolerance. Perhaps he can then move on to assign someone to enforce his comments policy against personal attacks. There's a lot to do. Drive the snakes from your own nest first.

New Year's Day hike

Lots of people, dogs and horses out on the trail on Sunday. Great day for it too!

Juniper snag near Williamson Valley trailhead, Sunday

Thought for 2012

Let's not wait for the end of the world as we know it -- let's bring it on, and make a better world happen.

Editorial: Sen. Gould's priorities

I just thought I'd like to top off the year with a cookie for the unnamed Courier editor, who today calls down Sen Ron Gould (R-Bizarro World) for leading off his legislative agenda for the new session with the critical issue of making sure he can carry his concealed weapon onto any public campus of higher learning, whether or not anyone on that campus believes it would be a good thing.
   If you think Mr Gould is an outrider with goofball legislation, I'd recommend that you keep an eye on the Legislature's website for daily updates on the bills that will start dropping next week. Any whacked-out right-wing idea you can imagine is likely to show up. This session will be at least as crazy as the last, and likely more so.
   I appreciate the editor's attention to this. Now I hope he'll remember it when it comes time for the paper to endorse a candidate for Congress from our newly constituted district. Mr Gould or someone just like him will likely be the Republican candidate. If he's too extreme for our capitol, could he be not too extreme for Washington?
   Anyhow, here's your cookie, editor, and happy new year!

New Year's Eve

Join the party at The Raven Cafe with Big Daddy D and the Dynamites, 8:30 till you drop.

Follow the money

Something that may cause some head-scratching among the deficit weenies: If our deficit is so scary, why are our bonds doing so well?

Bloomberg: Obama Wins Most Demand for Debt of U.S. Presidents Since Before First Bush

More in The Atlantic

Great Ape news

"He could get you at 30 feet with bars in between" --  Cheetah dead at 80

More blaming the teachers

"The assumption that teachers are really doing their best for kids is being lost somewhere in there. ... I see these mysterious bad teachers everyone talks about as (teachers who are) overwhelmed, underfunded and unsupported," says high-school teacher Alaina Adams in an AP story on A1 today, echoing a point teachers have been making for decades as the "accountability" meme has infested public policy on education. The stark failure of the ironically named No Child Left Behind program should be an object lesson for us in moving away from result-oriented standard testing and back toward process-oriented teaching and valuing the profession.
    But the infusion of 25 million federal clams coming from the Race to the Top program will instead go to yet more testing and "accountability," and the unnamed Courier editor likes that just fine. From where I sit it's just more of the same going down the administrative-cost crapper. That the Obama administration set up the parameters for this is just disheartening.
   The editor adds another numbskull column by Tom Purcell on the same page that only reinforces the 19th-century ideals of education, adding a religious element. Perhaps the editor thinks of education in those terms, with religious leaders civilizing savages using equal parts propaganda and pain.
    Getting us back on the right track with education -- meaning most kids coming out of school prepared for good, productive lives in the 21st century -- will require that we stop looking at schools as factories that make standardized workers, managed with incentives and disincentives for the factory workers (teachers). If we truly believe that people are individually unique in their talents and potentials, we have to see teachers as research scientists who study their subjects and work with them to maximize those potentials. This can never be easy, cheap or standardized.
    The editor will sit back and watch to see whether the results of Arizona's worker-bee assembly line are any better in three years. I can guarantee they won't, not from this.

 Update, Thursday: In The Atlantic today: What Americans Keep Ignoring about Finland's School Success

Must read: Getting real about class

The new issue of Esquire carries an unsettling piece by Stephen Marche:

There are some truths so hard to face, so ugly and so at odds with how we imagine the world should be, that nobody can accept them. Here's one: It is obvious that a class system has arrived in America — a recent study of the thirty-four countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only Italy and Great Britain have less social mobility. But nobody wants to admit: If your daddy was rich, you're gonna stay rich, and if your daddy was poor, you're gonna stay poor. Every instinct in the American gut, every institution, every national symbol, runs on the idea that anybody can make it; the only limits are your own limits. Which is an amazing idea, a gift to the world — just no longer true. Culturally, and in their daily lives, Americans continue to glide through a ghostly land of opportunity they can't bear to tell themselves isn't real. It's the most dangerous lie the country tells itself.

This sets out some important principles for how we should be thinking about ourselves as Americans and about how we are generally failing to address reality in our political calculus.

Worth your time: We Are Not All Created Equal

When editors don't edit

The piece on the guy who was arrested in PV on an allegation of exposing himself while in his car has drawn the most uniform response I've ever seen in the comments, amounting to: WTF, you mean you can go to jail based on nothing but someone's word? (This is not news to anyone who's been keeping an eye on our budding police state, of course.)
    I'm sure it makes a difference to readers that the guy is older, white and distinguished-looking, even wearing a tie for his mug shot, but when I saw this story last night I thought the same thing. The usual paucity of information in the parroted PVPD press release really makes you wonder on what basis this man's life is being summarily destroyed. Even if he's completely exonerated, he and his family will probably have to move out of state to escape the stigma, there to pursue years of civil litigation.
   Our popular obsession with "sex crimes" is way out of hand.
   The editors could have held back a bit on this one and given the poor sap a chance to clear himself before they splashed it into the paper. But I have a feeling that obsession lives in the editorial suite as well.

Update, Tuesday evening: The editors have added a "correction" to the online version redacting the  man's name and photo, and saying that the charge was a misdemeanor. I'm not clear on whether the Courier reporter got that wrong, or PVPD did in the original report. What's clear is that PVPD is doubling down on the righteousness of the bust without any new basis for it. In any case the correction reinforces that the many critics were correct and the editors should have held back in the first place. Barndoor shut, horse gone now, boys.

Editorial: Ethics and the Legislature

The unnamed editor high-fives Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery for advocating some technical legal changes to clarify rules and keep lobbyists from offering and legislators from accepting the kind of "gifts" that led to the Fiesta Bowl imbroglio. He intones thusly, "Herein lies an ethic. Elected officials serve the public and its best interests. Their constituents give them a gift when they elect them to office."
   Leaving aside  the endless frustration, public suspicion and flak that make up the largest part of this "gift," it's ironic that the editor can manufacture umbrage over the small potatoes of the Fiesta Bowl tickets while actively encouraging the vast suspension of ethics that our political culture has become.
  Should we really care about football tickets when huge international corporations are legally allowed more influence in our state and national governments than our citizens, or when we collectively attend far more to celebrity and advertising than policy or wisdom in choosing the people who will guide our future?
    Rules to prevent legislators from accepting a gift do nothing to keep people who would sell themselves so cheaply out of office. If anything they'll just find another way to get it.
     It's unrealistic to expect office-holders to act more ethically than the people who sent them there. Unless voters can get up off the couch and elect people who care most about making life better for all of us, who put service ahead of profit, who are unafraid of pressure and excited about doing the homework, our Legislature will be just as lazy and short-sighted as the rest of us.
   Imagining that a free football ticket will do anything real to change a vote in the Legislature is ridiculous. It's far more important to build a culture of collegial debate over serious public-policy issues, because the sort of person who cares about that will naturally and easily discredit anyone coming to him with trinkets and flattery. It's junior high down there now, because people like the editor care more about the color of a candidate's team jersey or what she's willing to say publicly about a litmus-test non-issue than how he works with people, maintains an open mind or does the mountains of homework. Let's get above the small stuff and talk about intelligence and commitment.
   The editor can show just how much he cares about ethics when it comes time for him to endorse a presidential candidate. Keep an eye out.

Must read: The competitiveness debate

Today's letter from Charles T Queen decrying our self-defeating ideas about competitiveness has drawn the predictable lashes from our local economic dunderheads. I happened across an article on the wonderful site Remapping Debate addressing a big question that's been hiding in plain sight of our punditocracy for years: how do German carmakers maintain  high profits and high output with high wages and good conditions for workers? If you've bought into the idea that we have no choice but to race to the bottom, the answers may surprise you: A Tale of Two Systems.

Must read: Extreme weather and why we can't study it

The New York Times is running a story today covering the weather record for 2011:

    A typical year in this country features three or four weather disasters whose costs exceed $1 billion each. But this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tallied a dozen such events, including wildfires in the Southwest, floods in multiple regions of the country and a deadly spring tornado season. And the agency has not finished counting. The final costs are certain to exceed $50 billion.
    “I’ve been a meteorologist 30 years and never seen a year that comes close to matching 2011 for the number of astounding, extreme weather events,” Jeffrey Masters, a co-founder of the popular Web site Weather Underground, said last month. “Looking back in the historical record, which goes back to the late 1800s, I can’t find anything that compares, either."

William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News, via AP

  But the more important and core thrust of the story is why our government agencies are not doing all they could to build good analysis of extreme events, which would help inform business and government about what to prepare for in the future:

   Lately, scientists have been discussing whether they can do a better job of analyzing events within days or weeks, not years.
    “It’s clear we do have the scientific tools and the statistical wherewithal to begin answering these types of questions,” Dr. Santer said
But doing this on a regular basis would probably require new personnel spread across several research teams, along with a strong push by the federal government, which tends to be the major source of financing and direction for climate and weather research. Yet Washington is essentially frozen on the subject of climate change.

    This year, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tried to push through a reorganization that would have provided better climate forecasts to businesses, citizens and local governments, Republicans in the House of Representatives blocked it. 
   The idea had originated in the Bush administration, was strongly endorsed by an outside review panel and would have cost no extra money. But the House Republicans, many of whom reject the overwhelming scientific consensus about the causes of global warming, labeled the plan an attempt by the Obama administration to start a “propaganda” arm on climate.

There's a lot more, it's worth your time: Harsh Political Reality Slows Climate Studies Despite Extreme Year