Editorial: SRP profligacy no real surprise

And the unnamed Courier editor's petty outrage is no surprise, either. But seriously, so what?

The editor fulminates breathlessly about executives of a big, overprivileged corporation throwing money around as if it's news. Sorry, editor, that's the norm in this country, and a large proportion of our voters are so used to it that they'll defend to the death a rich guy's right to spend the shareholders' dividends and the employee pension fund on whatever makes him happy, simply because that's how we measure success, after all.

I'd love to see the editor extend this logically and point out how drug and health-insurance companies hold us all hostage to their expense accounts, or how arms manufacturers find ways to gin up convenient wars. The editor might even find some common ground with Michael Moore on this if he were to really think it through.

But that's a forlorn hope. The editor is only peeved that SRP, using entirely legal means, is slowing down a certain massive public-works boondoggle that the editor thinks is a Good Thing. So he undertakes the only political tactic he can remember, which is to smear the opponent in hopes of making ill-informed people mad. This worked so well for Karl Rove, after all. Unfortunately all the public outrage in the world would have exactly zero effect on SRP. The company simply does not care, and it's above regulation.

I'm no fan of SRP, and I'm looking forward to the day the Legislature gathers enough political will to begin limiting the company's purview and power. So rather than sling gratuitous mud at SRP, I suggest that the editor put some effort into research on why the company's constitutionally secure position is a Bad Thing and what we can all do about it.

Our worst problem is hipshot media

Ben Hansen's pseudo-blog, purportedly about "words, media and ethics," today carries another of his extremely occasional columns, this on one of his favorite themes: "power, perquisites, pork and paramours," a formulation he's used eight other times in editorials in just the last three years.

The premise is painfully simplistic, that when a person is elected to Congress, s/he is immediately consumed by a Washington "culture of corruption" and becomes a depraved, power-mad pork-dispenser.

Somehow Ben can see no difference between Jeff Flake and Rick Renzi, between William Jefferson and Raul Grijalva, or between John Ensign and Olympia Snowe. To him they're all the same. What this tells me is that Ben knows literally nothing about what happens in Congress, and is making his accustomed hipshot at an easy, accustomed target. I'd love to be on the extension if Mr Flake were to call Ben on this insult to his integrity. He won't, of course, because, thanks to this sort of thing, a Courier editorial swings so little weight.

There's no question that there are some rotten apples in the Congressional barrel, and neither party can claim purity. That's true of every human organization, and it should be dead obvious to anyone over the age of twelve. But focusing on the rotten fifteen percent and tarring the rest with the same brush is insulting to the good ones and handicaps them in getting anything positive done.

The real tell on this is that if these ideas actually mattered to Ben, his editorial endorsements of candidates would focus more on their personal integrity than on the political positions that they say they espouse. Ben's record on this shows quite the opposite, reflexively endorsing corporatists and authoritarian radicals whatever their integrity problems. He endorsed Rick Renzi once after it was clear he was a carpetbagger sent in as a representative of the Pentagon rather than Arizona, and a second time after the Bush Justice Department called him on his extortion and land schemes.

Aside: I first met Renzi in July of '03, when he was just six months in office, and after talking with the guy for half an hour I knew exactly what he was and what would become of him. One would think that a man of Ben's experience and position would have had many opportunities to sniff out such a stinker. Why didn't he?

Ben, if you want to raise the bar on someone, start with your own profession. The American media in general and your paper in particular have failed us spectacularly over the past two decades, because people just like you put ideology ahead of citizenship. Drive the snakes from your own nest first.

The sweat-lodge story -- twice!

Today's paper offers an interesting perspective on the editing process by carrying two different edits of the same AP story.

I suppose it's remotely possible that this was a newsroom screwup, wherein two different Courier editors pulled different versions of the same story and shoveled them into the paper without checking. But that would be just too amazingly dumb to believe.

So readers have the opportunity to view some of the inner workings of how a story can drift and change with the editing process. For example, in one, "Sheriff's spokesman Dwight D'Evelyn said Tuesday that authorities have not yet spoken with Ray," while in the other, "Authorities said Ray has refused to speak with authorities." Same fact, different slants. Collect 'em all!

Why are there multiple versions? Different papers want different slants on the news. Here we see the focus-on-the-family version vs the focus-on-the-perp version. If he wanted both perspectives, a good editor would have merged the stories rather than repeat so much verbatim. Usually, though, editors choose the version that resonates with their own prejudices, which is what they think their readers really prefer.

OK, it was a colossal screwup, no matter how it came about. No getting around it.

Something else to consider: have you noticed how little we read about Sedona or the Verde Valley in the Courier? Might there be a prejudice in play in the editorial office that puts more value on this particular story?

Finally, this event took place adjacent to Senator McCain's place, nearer Cottonwood than Sedona. But the stories are all datelined Sedona, purely because of the 'new-age' event involved imho, and McCain's name has been kept out of it despite its human-interest value.

Talk of My Ass: Prop. 401 seeks to kill pipeline

Bluntly as ever, the Mayor states what is obvious to anyone who's been less than half asleep for the past two years. What he doesn't get is that if voters understand that 401 will lead to a vote on the pipeline, they're more likely to support it. With this piece he's working against his own interests.

I've never agreed with the 401 group's strategy of trying to separate the initiative campaign from the pipeline issue. That was doomed from the start as a laughable fig-leaf tactic any four-year-old would see through. What they don't fully get is that there is very broad discomfort with how the pipeline issue has been handled officially, and people will vote against it, the only question is how many.

If CWAG had sponsored an initiative to stop the pipeline itself, I think it would have a good chance of success. Mayor Wilson knows this too, hence his ill-considered position on 401. (If he really thinks the voters support the pipeline, 401 would be not much of a threat.)

The good argument against 401 is that it will be a permanent block on any kind of major infrastructure project, hampering future Councils in making big commitments that we may need to create the sort of city we really want.

Editorial: The recession is over? It's news to most

The unnamed Courier editor once again demonstrates his pitifully poor understanding of the English language.

"Recession" in this context means "reverse growth," i.e. a shrinking economy. It does not mean the effects of economic shrinkage. The end of a recession is the economic low point, crudely speaking, and it takes sustained expansion to make up the lost growth. This is not difficult to understand at all.

But the editor is confusing the technical pronouncements of economists with what he wants to hear about real-world effects on investment and employment. One might defend this as keeping intellectual pace with his audience, but I'd really prefer to avoid such cynicism.

Big G, the most important force in the universe. It's Feed-Your-Head Friday!

Editorial: Tracker, friends, deputies do their jobs

Oh great, another copy-and-paste of yesterday's front page in case you missed it. More hard-hitting analysis from the unnamed Courier editor's Barcalounger.

Honestly, guys, this is so boring.

ToT: Cap and Trade novel is all too realistic

Retired engineer Don Harney illustrates why the media don't usually interview retired engineers about economics. See, they are quite different skill sets.

Mr Harney spins a yarn about awful things resulting from a hypothetical cap-and-trade system, and concludes that instituting one would be just awful. This is how a retired engineer does economic research: by "writing a novel" in his head.

An economist, or dare I say anyone with a working brain, would do the research by looking at existing systems empirically. Like all of Europe, which has been trading emission credits since 2005 following a three-year test in the UK.

The results have been mixed, depending largely on how the credits are allocated, but the criticisms of the program include nothing like what Mr Harney writes in his imaginary novel.

You'd think the editors, in considering this piece for Talk of the Town status, might evaluate it for its possible value to the readers. But apparently talking straight out of your ass about something the editor reflexively doesn't like is enough to get you a column in the Courier. I know, maybe we could just mentally slug these as Talk of My Ass instead.

You can't make this stuff up

Talk of the Town: Special interests don't care about jobs

Rep Kirkpatrick defends her vote against cap-and-trade. Apparently the heat has not gone down since this hit the news several months ago, and she's feeling it.

Let's start at the top. The Representative characterizes the League of Conservation Voters as a "special interest," and the headline writer collectively characterized them as uncaring about jobs. Rep Kirkpatrick did not say that anywhere in the piece. That's the opinion of the editor, who insists on seeing all environmental advocates as zealots.

The Representative asserts that "global warming is the most important environmental issue affecting our country," yet somehow doing something real to curb carbon emissions and address global warming is not in the interest of rural Arizonans. The logical disconnect here is palpable. Climate change will pretty clearly hurt Arizona more than most other states, and rural areas more than urban. But the representative believes that saving a few pennies on our electricity bills in the short term is the greater good.

Yes, this is a disappointment. I had hoped for a stronger sense of leadership and willingness to take on the very serious challenges that we face, both as a state and as a nation. Coal is literally killing us, Representative. Keeping it a little cheaper is not the way to a secure future. Rather, introducing real market mechanisms to deal with the real cost of environmental damage will reduce the market disadvantage of cleaner energy technologies that will create substantially more jobs and economic activity than coal and oil do now.

PS: Does anyone have a take on what she might mean by "greater Arizona"? I'm pretty sure she doesn't mean that Arizona has claim to territory outside its borders (Sonora, perhaps?), so this smells like she thinks the reader thinks that Arizona is Maricopa and Pima Counties and needs reminding that there's more to the state. It's just a really odd construction to give to home-district press, and she used four times.

Arizonans can see first-ever crash of rockets into moon

Another fail for the headline writer, who saw "We've never done this before" in the story from a NASA press release and apparently jumped to the conclusion that crashing a rocket into the Moon had never been done before.

Moon exploration actually began with just this sort of experiment -- Luna 2, a Soviet vehicle, hit the Moon on Sept 14 1959, three months before the US put a Rhesus monkey on Little Joe 2 and got him all of 85 km up into the atmosphere.

Update, midnight: The comments on this story are just too funny/scary. Could all these people really be this dumb? Houston, we have a problem!

How to write more readable comments

Today a couple of commenters asked how I'm able to write paragraph breaks into my comments on dcourier.com. I replied there, but it occurs to me that others may like to know and the blog is a better spot to reference it.

Punch the 'comment' button below this post and you'll get a comment box with some notes just below it showing example HTML calls you can use. At least some of those commands will work on the Courier site as well. I've only tried the basics, and I ask that everyone be conservative about this stuff to avoid screwing up the comments and pissing off the IT department.

p = paragraph break
br = line break
b = bold on
/b = bold off
i = italic on
/i = italic off
href=http:\\[your link here] = start hyperlink
a = finish hyperlink

All HTML commands go between left and right carets.

It's easy. I also usually compose comments in Notepad or another simple text editor before copying them to the comment box, the better to proof them before publishing.

Editorial: Budget balances get even tighter

The unnamed Courier editor opines on the state budget impasse. Too bad he has no knowledgable sources. I gather that Fox News isn't covering it.

The editor quotes freshman legislator Steve Pierce (R-Las Vegas Ranch) asserting that the governor did "not only reject parts of the budget she had agreed to earlier in the year, 'she increased taxes, and increased spending, and left the state's finances unconstitutionally out of balance.'"

Had the editor bothered to check with the senior member of our legislative delegation, Lucy Mason, or any reporter covering the legislature, he'd have learned that the governor line-item-vetoed specific parts of the budget package to hold them as bargaining chips to draw legislative leaders, including Mr Pierce, back to the table to talk about revenues. The budget the legislature passed out was far from balanced, as required by the constitution, because the far right, including Mr Pierce, refused to talk about enhancing revenues to bring about balance.

The governor did not, in fact, raise taxes in any way. She is proposing that the legislature simply allow an initiative to go to the voters that would raise the sales tax temporarily, and she refused to accept substantial cuts in business taxes, again as a negotiating tactic -- she will eventually. She can't "raise spending," that's the province of the legislature. (The governor controls a big pile of federal cash, but that's outside the budget process.) The editor is either fundamentally misunderstanding both the process of government and the facts on the ground, or he is consciously lying to his readers.

As for the governor having "alienated many of the lawmakers who were trying to help keep the house from falling," it takes two to tango, and as I read it there are a whole lot of moderates in both houses who are more peeved with the tactics of certain far-right members than they are with the governor.

This is a Republican-on-Republican fight, pitting experienced moderates like Brewer and Mason against radicals like Pam Gorman, Ron Gould, Russell Pearce and their little clutch of neophyte sycophants. It's interesting that the editor is happy to take the word of a legislator still learning the ropes over that of Brewer, who has more experience in the legislature and administration than most anyone down there, as well as strong conservative credentials.

The editor has clearly chosen the side of the antigovernment radicals. I have no problem with that per se. My issue is that he is attempting to influence public opinion in their favor by misleading readers about what's really going on.

Editorial: Decision on Afghanistan is past due

The unnamed Courier editor, speaking with all the experience and authority granted him by his rec-room Barcalounger, is unhappy that the Commander-in Chief doesn't jump when one of his subordinates says 'frog.'

Oddly enough, in the six years of Afghan involvement under the previous administration, as the commanders on the ground begged for more resources only to see them transferred to the Iraq adventure and run into the ground, I don't recall the editor ever once using the word "dither." I must have missed it.

Clearly the editor prefers the accustomed American strategy in the area, eschewing all thought in favor of rash, heroic action. Never mind that this has so far resulted only in grinding a whole lot of young Americans and a thousands and thousands of Afghans and Iraquis young and old into little bits of meat and bone. No doubt the editor would employ the ol' sausage-making metaphor there.

I dunno about you, dear reader, but whenever I run up against a problem that's not responding to my ideas about solving it, I have a tendency to stop, back off a few paces and take a good look at the situation to see if I can't think up a better solution.

And if I'm supervising a team on a project and one of my subordinates starts telling everyone how much better things would go if he had his way, he would pretty quickly be off the team -- not because his idea was bad or good, but because he doesn't know how to work on a team. That's called insubordination.

Apparently the editor thinks that's an appropriate action for a general in time of war -- but only when his commander is a Democrat.

Again, the editor should stick with local issues, where his paper's interest and responsibilities lie. An editorial column is supposed to be the authoritative word of someone with his finger on the pulse of events, not basement-bar sports commentary. Every time you do this, guys, you further reduce the credibility of the paper. That's bad for you, and bad for the community.

Amster: Incivilities aside, can we all get along?

Randall, always the diplomat, says, "Spirited debate and vigorous dialogue are healthy things for any society, ...." Any sensible person must agree, but I have to add a caveat: the spirited debate must be over real issues and based in the best facts available, and the vigorous dialogue must be handled with respect and without fear. Without those conditions, you get the what we are experiencing, a food fight in a burning house.

OK, I'm gonna go off for a bit here.

However civil, dialogue does us no good if we're talking about the wrong things. The great power of Madison Avenue is making us think about things that don't matter in order to sell stuff. Advertising strategists long ago realized that this tactic works far better on people who are already insecure. It was no stretch at all to apply these principles for political purposes, and it's no surprise that they are most often employed by corporate interests, which have the most practice at it.

Two fundamental forces shape every society, and the character of a society is largely determined by the balance struck between them. The dynamic force looks outward, for instance seeking food in a previously unknown valley. The static force looks inward, protecting the old hunting grounds and relying on the knowledge that what was successful before will be again. Both are correct and useful, and neither alone is healthy. The basic expression of dynamism is curiosity. The basic expression of stasis is fear. This is why reactionaries are more easily distracted by fear-based propaganda.

Try talking to someone who's in fear, and you'll generally get the same result: you wind up talking about what scares them, not about what really matters.

I'm afraid we can't look forward to a less scary future in which reactionaries will be more comfortable and therefore more reasonable. As Alvin and Heidi Toffler so adroitly pointed out decades ago, change is inevitable and happening with increasing speed. It fundamentally frightens people, and it is causing predictable societal backlash everywhere. We see it in the spread of religious fundamentalism and rising nativism as people try to make sense of the world with ancient, blunt intellectual tools, trying to do surgery with stone axes. Most people want simple answers, even as the problems grow increasingly complex. Their answer to this tidal wave of change is to try to hold fast to the pier, when they should be thinking in terms of surfing.

What's biting reactionaries in the ass is that they're so easily manipulated with fear, and they stampede over the intellectual cliffs. What's biting progressives in the ass is disdain for fearfulness and blaming people for being who they are, when the real villains are the manipulators. We need each other to address huge challenges from change that we cannot even begin to slow down, and the stakes are existential and rising. But we wind up talking past one another over trivialities.

So how to break this impasse? Easy. Have more parties. Invite everyone.

I'm serious. People don't yell at (hate, kill, insult, deprive, conquer) each other as much when they recognize each other as members of a shared society, real people with real lives and a dish to share. Build trust and you build understanding and cooperation. It's not coincidence that public discourse has deteriorated as Americans have become increasingly isolated from one another, reducing social activities and community involvement in favor of home activities, personal demons and teevee.

So Randall, rather than farble on stating the problem, how about offering some solutions? You're a Professor of Peace Studies, fergadsake - how about using your column space to teach?

Editorial: Environmental causes at odds with sovereignty

So I was wrong, and I laughed out loud.

The unnamed Courier editor did read the Nava-Hopi Observer piece after all. And while he didn't see fit to assign a word of news space to it, that his readers might have a few facts on hand, he jumped right in with his opinion -- one that goes no deeper than the skin of an apple, demonstrating again his disdain for research and disinterest in issues beyond what will make his preselected political point. It veers wildly beyond reason, as well, unless the editor can somehow show a mechanism for how the Sierra Club can "dictate" anything to the tribes. Federal courts, on the other hand ... but then the editor would be arguing against adherence to federal law.

There are a quite few facts missing from this hipshot, and it would be nice if the Courier kept its readers sufficiently abreast of developments to allow better informed opinion. The history of this goes back at least into the Nixon administration, and the overall problem has persisted since the discovery of coal on Hopi early last century.* It's a complex issue involving tribal economics, corporate hardball, inter- and intra-tribal politics, federal abuse and neglect, massive water and environmental degradation, religious issues, energy and development, and, of course, greed at the center of everything.

As recently as December, Dineh and Hopi groups were petitioning the feds for more environmental and other protections against Peabody and filing lawsuits. The editor's slapdash assumption that the people speaking for environmental issues are all rich white liberal outsiders is just wrong. The tribe's expulsion of environmental groups is not to enforce sovereignty by removing outsiders from the issue, that's the cover story. Rather, at least in large part, it is to silence internal dissent by cutting off access to publicity and legal resources.

The reader may wonder why we in Yavapai County should care. After all, they are duly elected tribal governments doing as they like with their own land, right? If only it were that simple. But bear in mind that federal and corporate interests created this issue in the first place and have fueled and manipulated it ever since. Bear in mind that the damage to water resources and the environment will not be confined by the reservation boundary. Bear in mind that the limited sovereignty of the reservation system does not in any way limit the rights of native citizens under the Constitution. Bear in mind that we also share state money with the tribes for education and other sensible purposes. Bear in mind that these are our neighbors, and this is our neighborhood.
*It used to be on Hopi, anyway. I remember clearly the first time I came through Arizona, in 1970, the maps showed the Hopi rez as a rectangle. It's shrunk quite a bit since then, in large part because of coal.

Today's Chuckle

Check out the comment exchange between the first anonymous commenter and the too-too Chris Bergman under Editorial: Tax aiding schools a vital investment. Nice smackdown!

Can we really reduce such complexity to a simple equation? Your Friday instant mind-expansion:

Hopi Tribal Council bans environmental groups

Fascinating story in the latest Nava-Hopi Observer: It seems that the Council is willing to go pretty far to protect the profits of Peabody Coal. Note the comments. I see Joe Shirley is right there with them: "Environmental activists and organizations are among the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty, tribal self determination, and our quest for independence."

This is a great platform for some muscular debate about all sorts of regional issues. Too bad we won't see anything about it in the Courier.

The temptations of headline-writing

Back in the '80s, when I was learning the trade, my boss was an energetic Scot with a droll wit. He kept us in stitches by writing snarky, painfully alliterative and punny headlines making fun of the client's content.

But we never actually used them, of course.

Today the paper offers us several examples of over-the-top headline-writing:

Exercise instructor makes the stretch to open Pilates studio
Police need help smoking out cigarette thief
Fossil Creek fish flap comes to a head Saturday
PV resident raises stink over skunks
Glass business owner casts stones

They're all very cute -- the Fossil Creek example is even multilevel, working in "fish ... head" while subtly referencing the headwater chub in the story -- and I'm sure there were chuckles around the newsroom on a slow day. (Seems like most days have been pretty slow this week.) But rather than sparking up the paper with the spirit of fun, publishing them just indicates a bored editor convinced of his mental superiority and lacking respect for his copy or his customers at the helm. The last one above even manages to directly insult the letter-writer.

Bad form, boys. Keep it on the sports page, where it belongs.