Today's Chuckle

A lobbying group gives Rep Tobin one of a pile of cheapo plaques (I've seen this sort of thing littering the walls and furniture of many legislative offices), he thinks that's special enough to write a press release about it, and the Courier editors think it's so newsworthy that they print it verbatim (hint: that's what "Special to the Courier" means).

The reader should ask: is this the best the Representative can show us? Is this the best good-news story the Courier can come up with about the district's junior representative, who's also in leadership?

Finally: Why does Mr Tobin insist on labeling himself "R-Paulden" rather than just "AZ District 1 Representative" or "Majority Whip"? Would he maybe prefer to distance himself from the voters in Prescott and Cottonwood who elected him?

Today's Chuckle

"Community activist" Paul Baskin recommends that we bring back the King.

Editorial: Others should follow CV course

The unnamed Courier editor comes out in favor of a small energy project in Chino Valley that will save the town a ton of money pretty quick. The numbers make it a dead obvious choice, so obvious that it should be unremarkable. But to the editor, and to an unaccountably large number of our fellow citizens, solar energy projects are still thought of as exotic and experimental.

After the reader slogs through his customary cut-and-paste from the front-page story a couple of days ago, the editor whacks out, "one of the nation's most pressing imperatives is to adopt a program on the order of President John F. Kennedy's effort to reach the moon before 1970 to achieve independence from foreign energy, especially oil." This sort of rhetoric was inspiring when Jimmy Carter presented it to us in the '70s. Now it seems more than a little antique.

The challenges we face with climate change and dwindling petroleum resources should be carrying us to a vision of not just independence from foreign oil, but total independence from fossil carbon as an energy source. As the Chino Valley project and a vast number of other more ambitious plans and projects are proving every day, we have the economically obvious technology in hand. What we don't have is the political will to reduce the market incentives favoring petro energy and big corporations, or to level the playing field for clean energy and smaller-scale production. That's the sort of vision that the editor could be offering, and, for the good of us all, should be offering.

Editorial: New laws could be model for nation

Yes, Russel Pearce's ideas, as recounted by the unnamed Courier editor, could indeed be a model for the nation. But which nation? Given the xenophobic, isolationist police state they advance, I'll nominate North Korea.

Blaming the foreigners for (your issue here) is an easy sell most times in this country, where people generally have so little contact with non-Americans, but it's especially easy in hard economic times. As the political right descends further into extremism and madness, immigration is about all it has left to attract reasonable people to vote with it. It's inevitable that the extremists will present proposals like this, so we should get used to seeing them. What we shouldn't do is accept that this country must therefore continue down the path of increasing xenophobia and subsequent economic ruin.

From his quotes even Sen Pierce does not expect to pass his agenda through the Legislature. This is a game to hold the media spotlight, keep the dwindling radical base whipped up and maintain the untoward power he holds in the Capitol.

But if these proposals were to pass -- and that's not out of the question, make no mistake -- here's what we'd get.

By expanding the jurisdiction of local police to immigration status, we get harassment of all Latinos in less tolerant communities, which will selectively cripple those local economies as people leave, and create decades of court battles as these practices are litigated and the laws slowly thrown out as unconstitutional. Meanwhile local and federal taxes will go up or important services will be squeezed out to pay for all that extra enforcement.

Attempting to make it criminal for undocumented workers to solicit day labor will cause harassment of brown-skinned day laborers (and most of them are certainly legal), triggering suits and more economic problems, catch almost no illegals, and lead law enforcement to demand new forms of ID for legal workers. Consider how you'll feel when you're standing on the corner waiting for a friend and a cop asks for your papers.

What the unnamed Courier editor identifies as the piece missing from Pearce's proposals, a rational and effective guest-worker program, is in truth the only piece we need to accomplish every practical goal most Americans want. It won't, however, accomplish what the radical right wants, and that's to whip up racism and win elections on fear.

It appears that the editor is a bit dubious about Pearce, but he can't quite bring himself to renounce a plan that is sure to "backfire badly." Perhaps he sees the danger to our own local economy, but he also sees benefits in harassing Latinos wholesale for political gain. Until he's willing to stand up and say no, he's a big part of the problem.

Today's Chuckle

Check out Tim's pathetic attempt to control what the commenters can say in response to his pseudoblog entry.

Update, Saturday: An interesting followup question would be whether readers changed their votes because of the events of the past few weeks, and how.

News from my favorite planet for Feed-Your-Head Friday!

Editorial: Democracy gets boost, takes shot

The unnamed Courier editor puts on his sage hat and weighs democratic principle against -- what?

In the front half of the piece, the editor makes a clear case for upholding the integrity of the voting process. Admirable.

In the back half he undercuts that and tries to say that principle can be fairly balanced by practical considerations. We shouldn't necessarily hold up the initiative process to serve the guy who came almost last in the primary, right?

Well, let's look at why we have primary elections. The clear purpose of doing two elections rather than just one is to have the general election ballot produce a useful result. A simple election involving (say) ten candidates for three seats would inevitably lead to people being elected by minority votes. The primary reduces the candidate list to produce majority results.

We also know from clear experience that how people vote can change as they receive new information. The space between the primary and general allows voters to focus on the general candidates and refine their judgments of them.

In characterizing Mr Katan as "a candidate who got a Dear John letter from voters at the polls already" and saying, "The people did speak, after all," the editor asserts that the results are already in. By that logic, there is no need for a general election at all and Ms Linn and Messrs Hanna and Blair, the top three primary vote-winners, should simply be seated on Council. Top candidate Hanna got a little less than 6,000 of the over 13,000 votes cast in a constituency of about 25,000 voters. A clear majority didn't vote for him, but he and two others supported by even fewer votes would become the representatives of all.

The only result that counts is the general. The people have not yet spoken, and getting on that ballot is essential to any hope of a fair contest. Mr Katan received exactly 25 fewer votes than Mr Peters did. I'd say their chances of winning a seat are very similar.

In training poll workers, election staff drills into us that we're to err on the side of inclusion. We're to do all we can to facilitate rather than impede the voter. At the front end of the election, we want everyone in, because participation is a sacred right and more is better for the process. Qualifying the ballots and weeding out the mistakes come later.

We should clearly follow the same principle in the candidacy process, for the same reasons. Where there's uncertainty, we should err on the side of inclusion, and that's what the City Clerk should have done to head off the situation we find ourselves in.

The editor's argument that it's reasonable to proceed with the election despite the dispute is completely specious and inimical to the democratic process. My ancestors didn't participate in the Revolution because democracy would be simpler, cheaper or easier, and to the extent that we allow those values to enter the conversation now, we're tossing our heritage and way of life on the dump.

Rural areas protest proposed water cuts

Important bits are missing from Joanna's story today.

First, ADWR management anticipated the state budget shortfall and was ahead of other agencies in implementing cuts in its own budget, thinking reasonably that this would insulate it from arbitrary cuts later. This proved optimistic when instead the Legislature demanded uniform cuts from all agencies on the same baseline, regardless of what they'd already done. No good deed goes unpunished, after all, and this scattershot approach essentially punished responsible agencies more than the slackers.

Second, LD1 Rep Andy Tobin and Sen Steve Pierce have been leaders in blocking any effort to raise revenues to partially make up the shortfall and prevent this story from happening. At the same time they have pushed for substantial cuts in taxes on business.

I understand that no newspaper story can convey the entire web of factors contributing to a given event, but voters should always bear in mind that there's more to the story, and reporters must attend to the fifth basic question: why.

Legal wrangling continues as city ballots reach voters

Cindy's piece today brings in information from this week's court filings, and it would have been enough to report that without the massive rehash of past events that obscures the new info. But that's no big deal.

The characterizations of the legal process as "wrangling" that "drags on," however, seem at odds with reality. The courts have been right on it in this case, responding to the short timelines left for clearing up the mess before the election deadlines. At the end of the article Judge Gemmill says the court will "try to get a decision out shortly" after Monday's hearing. That's a quick decision, in my experience.

The reader would be wise to consider that in recasting this efficient, pretty-quick court process as dragged-out wrangling, the editors are creating a subtext implying that this eminently reasonable legal issue is a waste of everyone's time. That's a standard tactic in yellow journalism.

Editorial: Park trailer plan not a good idea

The unnamed Courier editor has a problem with mobile homes, but he won't quite say why.

Go ahead and look, you won't find it. He says they're small, and that's "not the way most of us would choose to live." So what? Does the county propose to require that everyone live in mobile homes? I guess I missed that part.

No, the editor's problem is that mobile homes are less expensive, meaning they're preferred by people with less-than-princely incomes. And those people are, at least in the editor's neighborhood, undesirable.

This is where the "reduces my property value" argument tends to show up. Somebody puts Mom up in her own trailer across the back yard, and the grasping, snobbish neighbor down the road thinks that's ugly. He wouldn't like to buy in to "that sort" of neighborhood, so he infers that no one would, and from that he infers a threat to the value of his house. (For my money, if a condition keeps the snobs out, I'm all for it. They make rotten neighbors.)

Has the editor ever come across the Catch-22 wherein if you want to build your own house on your own county land, up to now you weren't allowed to live there while you did it? I wonder how the pioneers the editor pretends to so admire might react to that kind of restriction.

We all know real the dynamic at work here. So why can't the editor just say it out loud? Only because that might make him look like a grasping snob who can't abide the lesser classes. Here's a clue, editor: we already knew that.

Medical examiner: Blows Kennedy received could have been fatal

Someone in the comments pointed it out before me: an awful, awful headline. It'd be laughable if it weren't about a brutal murder.

Letter: Chamber should seek volunteers, not money

Andrea Smith suggests that the Chamber seek volunteers rather than cash to put up Xmas lights. Better yet, let the Chamber hire people to do this and so contribute to the local economy. Its interest in the Xmas display is purely as business promotion, after all. Why should businesses get this service for free?

Editorial: Holiday forecast looks brighter

Here's another entry from the unnamed Courier editor's empty Barcalounger.

Excepting the last line (a wan suggestion that readers spend more, presumably at retailers who advertise in the Courier), this is nothing more than a business-page filler. A waste of time for both writer (even if the writer is just a chair) and reader.

Interesting that it didn't show up on the website till after 3pm. Maybe the staff was just ashamed and hoped no one would see it. I know I would.

Election update

And so the City-election vaudeville continues. The appeals court stays the stay, and the election that was on and then off is on again. A few thousand people will need replacement ballots that the court will review again next week to determine whether they should have Mr Katan's name on them. It may decide to prescribe a new, separate ballot for Council after results of the current ballots are in. Winners on the current ballot could be different on the new ballot. There will be additional expense, the people's business will be held up, voters will be confused about what to do, and even the unnamed Courier editor agrees that the City botched the job and needs to start from scratch. What a Chinese fire drill.

So what's a voter to do? This is the most important question the Courier should be addressing rather than focusing entirely on the legal wrangling. The answer is simple and reassuring.

If you threw away the first ballot, call or visit the registrar's office to get a replacement. If you want to vote for Paul Katan, write his name on the line under the other candidates and fill in the oval. If you want to give him (or any other candidate) a little better chance of winning, don't vote for anyone else. Mail the ballot, right away. If another ballot comes, vote that one too. And if you really want to help, make sure your friends and family know what to do.

Above all don't blame Mr Katan for this. The City staff screwed the pooch here, and deserve to take every bit of the heat.

Update. 4:30pm: Council held an exec session on this subject this afternoon. Perhaps we'll hear more from Council members on how they feel about the situation now that they're (I hope) fully in the loop.

Climate change film debut draws supporters, critics

Ken's piece, which might be appropriate for the entertainment section, finds its way to the front page -- why? What makes this not just news, but urgent news?

This was a political event masquerading as an academic presentation. That's obvious to anyone with half a brain. The arguments are hackneyed, anti-science and fully discredited, on a par with the Black Helicopter and Chemtrail conspiracy theories.

There is no justifying this coverage as credible news. The editorial decision to front-page this rot clearly indicates the bias of the paper's managers, and it should inform readers about everything they see in the Courier about climate change and politics.

Our society and our planet cannot afford to continue allowing the media to pretend that this sort of thing is an equal viewpoint offering balance. There is no equivalency here, no debate. This is nothing more than insane obstructionism against defending ourselves from a clearly known and existential threat. Large corporate interests fund it, and it's being sold to people who are ill-equipped intellectually to understand the complexity of the situation, so they retreat into la-la-I-can't-hear-you denial of the deeply scary scenarios we're rushing into headlong. We must resist that in ourselves and in our media.

County sheds light on dark sky ordinances

Here's another case where the headline writer is so interested in a pathetic attempt at cleverness that s/he obscures the story. County P&Z is actually proposing more exemptions to the lighting ordinances, further eroding the nighttime view county-wide.

Elks contract, incorporation top Prescott city agenda

I find it fascinating that Mr Norwood is proposing accounting tricks to shift stimulus funds designed for energy conservation over to the Elks Theatre. It's creative and for an arguably good cause, but it sorta smells like fraud to me. I just don't see how you can use conservation money to buy early 20th-century plaster decorations. I wonder what Mr Lamerson might have to say about that.

My boilerplate on the Elks:
* The theatre will only survive if we put the money into equipment and major improvements to make it work better and be truly rentable. Every dime spent on decoration is wasted if artists and promoters can't use it.
* Bring theatre pros in as primary advisers, designers and contractors. Unspecialized architects and contractors will screw it up every time.
* It is not, never has been and never could be an opera house.

On the incorporation of Williamson Valley, I think it would be dead stupid to add yet another separate municipality to Quad City. This area needs coordinated planning, shared resources and a stronger sense of shared community. For a practical future we should be eliminating arbitrary boundaries, not making more. It will be far better in the long run to annex WV into Prescott than create another parochial suburb and sales-tax competitor.

Editorial: The right call at the right time

The unnamed Courier editor thinks good ol' boy and reliable Republican Kenton Jones is a good choice as judge. I'm so surprised. Yawn.

The Katan saga

So far the Courier's coverage of the current flap over Paul Katan's ballot status seems pretty straightforward, better then it has been on occasion. The comments are fascinating, in that so many people can blame him for filing suit and "costing the taxpayers money" after the judge has agreed that yes, the City screwed up and really is legally out of bounds.

Should Paul have done the big-man thing and quietly retired from contention when the City told him to sit down and shut up? I expect that argument only flies with those who would have liked him to sit down, shut up and not run again. And perhaps Paul learned a thing or two from Bush v. Gore a few years ago.

I've known Paul since he started getting involved politically years ago at Access13. In those days he similarly refused to shut up and sit down, it caused friction with the established order and got him chucked out of the room a couple of times. But he usually had a point, and the establishment learned that chucking him out did no good. We also learned that he is honest and conscientious, and while he keeps an eye on his ideals, he also knows how to express them in practical terms and work to build useful consensus.

I know directly that this lawsuit is not the path Paul would have chosen, rather that he feels bound by principle and loyalty to the people supporting his campaign. The City can't be allowed to get away with scotching his bid for office out of hand, no matter what his real chances are of winning. Our system of law is not based on who's the strongest. It's about a fair shake for everyone, and I applaud Paul for taking that stand.

Why things fall apart. A little on entropy for your Friday instant mind-expansion.