Open thread, Tuesday

A nice shot by Lesley from our recent trip to the Mendocino County coast.

Since you're reading this, so you're not vacationing, there are several gigs this week to check out: jazz jam at The Raven Thursday 8-10, the trio at Tlaquepaque Friday afternoon, the quartet featuring Susannah Martin at Ken's Creekside in VOC Friday 9-12, and Big Daddy in front of the PV Harkins on Saturday 5-9. Hope to see you out and about.

Scene from my window: Talking nonstop, holding his cellphone to his left ear, a driver tries to manhandle his street-sweeper with one hand through a U-turn among the parked cars in front of my house, wiping out some edging and narrowly missing my fence, backing up nervously, then sailing back down the street, leaving the usual dirt cloud and muddy trail behind him and missing the gutter completely. Who trains these guys?

And just for fun, a nine-minute instant mind-expansion on what this means to a physicist or mathematician.

Prescott's lion finally loses to urban perils

The story-under-the-story here is what really fascinates me. We learn that Game and Fish collared a mountain lion living inside the city limits and tracked it for three years to study its habits. What we don't see in Joanna's story is whether the City or Game and Fish informed the people in those neighborhoods about what most residents would see as a risk that little Janie might be plucked out of her sandbox and dragged into the bushes for lunch. I don't have any argument with the science, but I gotta wonder about the informed-consent part of it, and I look forward to the comments.

Editorial: Money gets more and more scarce

Today the unnamed Courier editor illustrates a couple of very basic propaganda/marketing techniques: oversimplification to confuse, and recasting events to fit the desired narrative.

Never mind that there's a whole lot more to understand about the budget situation, both fiscally and politically. The editor wants to spoon-feed you a simple good-guy/bad-guy story. The bad guy is the governor who wants to tax you and spend the money on stuff you don't need. The good guys are the noble anti-tax legislators who won't "break faith with their constituents." I'm surprised he didn't throw in a scene from High Noon to add some thrilling drama.

Readers who understand basic logic will notice that his argument is founded on a cracked premise. He writes, "Many of Brewer's fellow Republican lawmakers won their legislative seats on promises of no tax increases," implying that those Grover Norquist-inspired anti-tax pledges so adored by the extreme right have a real vote-getting effect. Since blind anti-tax zealotry is only shared by a small minority of voters (generously, 12-15%), and they have no one else to vote for, it's obvious that they can't really affect a close race, even a Rep primary. They take credit for what they didn't do just to puff up their importance, and it often works in the public mind, giving them more influence on legislators than they truly warrant. I've seen the threatening stuff the Goldwater Institute and its attack dogs circulate to legislators, and folks, I gotta tell you it's definitely ugly and I'm sure scary to spine-challenged pols.

The truth is that the radicals who 'signed anti-tax pledges' did so not because a significant body of their constituents demanded it, but because they truly believe, like Norquist, that the best government is a dead one, and they don't give a rat's ass about the majority of constituents who would prefer that politicians engage their brains before making law. These are the same pols who have been holding up the budget process (in the train-robbery sense) for months. Contrary to the Courier editor's narrative, they are really the black hats in this movie.

The white hats are the sensible moderates, including the Governor, who are trying to get through the hail of black-hat bullets before the deficit train runs down Little Nell Arizona. Ack, enough!

So why does the editor want you to accept his Bizarro recasting of the story? Because he's in the gang with the bad guys. He would happily deprive you of needed government services like infrastructure, education and health care because he's got his and he truly believes that he shouldn't have to pay for any more. It's a short-sighted, adolescent worldview, not conservative at all, but radically anti-government. And he'll wrap himself in the flag to pitch it to you.

So if his narrative is so twisted, what about his supposed paradigm-shifting point, that "states are out of money?"

It's easier to see in California, where in '78 the anti-tax zealots won the day and instituted tax rules designed to bankrupt the government. It took a couple of decades, but it worked. Meanwhile those darksiders got to work on financial and corporate deregulation to maximize profits, and we found ourselves holding the bag on a hollow, deindustrialized economy and a financial system looted by gangsters. The issue is not that the states are out of money. It's that the bad guys stole it. And they've got the gall to feed us D-Day's line from Animal House: "You fucked up -- you trusted us!"

This particular paradigm hasn't shifted. Our system is basically sound, but it needs repair, particularly a big hole in the wall of the vault. If we can reindustrialize based on clean energy production, play hardball against the corporations who demand to use our infrastructure for free while draining us of money, and keep the professional gamblers from playing high-stakes roulette with our financial system, we'll be able to get back on track. But we weren't insured for it, so we'll have to pay to fix that wall, no question about it.

Open thread, Monday edition

It's a great day out there, I hope you're having fun too.

Quote of the day:

"When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism or you know maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, “Man that doesn’t do us any good — women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country.” I don’t think it bodes well for her, a statement like that. Because, again, fair or unfair, it is there, I think that’s reality, and I think it’s a given. I think people can just accept that she is going to be under the sharper microscope." -- Gov. Sarah Palin, August 2008

Editorial: Every agency needs scrutiny

As might be expected, the unnamed Courier editor is all over the idea of knocking over the Department of Education. Public schools have been a bugbear of the right since they began, and eliminating any chunk of the bureaucracy is attractive to the anti-tax and anti-government crusaders. Notice that he paraphrases (read: misquotes, adding grammatical error) the representative as saying, "diminishing if not eliminating the Department of Education could save a substantial amount of money as well as enhancing local control of schools," both consistent right-wing memes.

But as Rep Mason has laid out directly on The People's Business, her ideas are not as simplistic as either extreme will paint them. It's not really about saving money so much as spending less on administration and more on teachers and classrooms. It's not so much about enhancing local control, but rather about giving teachers more freedom to teach.

I think it's entirely possible, even likely, that there is a lot of redundancy and essentially useless activity going on in the DofE building. Rooting that out, eliminating it and moving the money into classrooms in a safe and useful way will be a massive legislative undertaking. I can confirm that Lucy's got the energy for it, but she'll be pretty much alone against an impressive bulwark of entrenched interests. In any case, the entire discussion is premature, as was the Courier's query to Superintendent Horne, because nothing will even begin to happen on this before next session, and then not without a great deal of work to gather allies and formulate some concrete proposals. Lucy isn't a hip-shooter.

I'm sure she'll thank the editor for his support, but it's looking like the Courier will be among her many fair-weather friends on the right trying to hijack her ideas for their regular agenda. With friends like these ....

Amster: Noise competes with information

As a professional propagandist I have to admire the establishment meme that the online world is all noise compared to the corporatist bunk that passes for big-market journalism. While I wouldn't say that Randall is totally falling for it here, readers might be excused if they take away that message, thanks to some cloudy writing and the ever-undermining headline writer.

The really amusing part is that the darksiders claim to believe that free-market competition can solve all problems, yet since the Internet began freeing our information market, they consistently denigrate it as worthless. That sorta smells of vested interest to me.

I look at it through the other end of the telescope. Just as more stuff to buy at big-box stores has generally reduced our quality of life, the vast expansion of information access we've experienced has had decidedly mixed results in terms of informing and educating the electorate, because so few people have the media savvy to separate jewels from junk. But it's inescapable that more choice has opened space for higher-quality writing and thinking, in large part because the lower overhead of the Net (you don't need a printing press anymore!) reduces the media's dependence on monied interests. That's truly independent thought. Darksiders hate that.

For me it's both positive and negative that just as anyone is allowed to get their message out, everyone's accountable now and anyone can throw bricks at it. This is the sort of lively media environment that would have been more familiar to readers of the yellow-journalism days early last century, when specialized political-issue papers multiplied like bunnies, sold on the basis of sensational headlines and their rhetoric was often over the top. Eventually government and corporate interests got a handle on that, just as now they're trying to get a handle on the Net. You'll want to keep an eye on that.

I'm sure the Courier isn't paying Randall enough to make him happy to bend over and take the regular tongue-lashings he gets from readers. But Randall, that's how it is now, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. Whining does not help.

Sen. McCain talks about health care, Sedona effort

Joanna gets an interview with McCain, but like many other experienced journos she wasn't able to get him to say anything. It's no surprise to me, and you can't blame the reporter, but I don't see in the copy any reason to carry this non-story. Maybe it's just designed to add some front-page ballast to the puff piece on McCain's new campaign HQ, er, local office.

I'm struck that most of the commenters really excoriating the Senator seem to be coming from the extreme right.

Holiday open thread

Some cool summer imagery from the Cascades by Ross Hilmoe, who really needs to get out shoooting more often. Enjoy!

Editorial: Is sacred honor still within us?

The unnamed Courier editor treats us to a little unintended irony. Nuff said. I'm taking the day off -- if you don't count the radio show and a gig with Big Daddy D at the Raven tonight. Happy 4th!

TGIF Open thread

Thanks for helping me get this off to a great restart! Start your holiday weekend off right -- check out the Ahwatukee Concert Band on the square at six tonight, then have dins with the trio at 129 1/2!

Top comment of the week today from Darren, responding to the letter about over-coverage of Michael Jackson. Bravo, that's how it's done!

I think it's a great idea on this weekend in particular to go back and read the document we're celebrating, as well as some of the background. I'm also reminded that other peoples have declared their own sovereignty as well, before and since, and there are a lot of good, inspiring stories there too.

Editorial: Brewer should veto guns in bars

Oh yes, I don't think there's any question that legalizing concealed carry in bars is a bad idea. I work in bars a lot, and I sure don't like the thought of encouraging this, even though I realize that there are probably many people doing this illegally now, particularly women, who have a better reason for doing it than men. So let's applaud the unnamed Courier editor for taking a sensible stand on a gun issue, where so frequently in the past the Courier has been the NRA's panting lapdog. As it stands the bill's language is really stupid, as the editor points out.

Of course, let's not forget that if it passes and some really awful things happen, it could turn public opinion even more against all the gun-totin' going on in this state. But that factor should not cause us to question the editor's sincerity. Not a bit.

1pm: Hilariously, several commenters accuse the editor of radical liberalism! Yup, darksiders eat their own young.

Letter: Watch how Congress spends our money

I'm pretty sure I've read exactly this before in the site comments, but I can't remember exactly where, it's been a while back. I've noticed this a couple of times over the past year. Following their unfortunate habit of doing what they like with reader submissions and controlling the message, it looks like the editors are promoting occasional comments to letter status -- occasional right-wing comments, mind -- even though they have a box on the opinion page specifically for selected comments. Now why do you think they'd do that?

Power to the people: Committee files petitions to get Taxpayer Protection Initiative on city ballot

Cindy Barks' front-pager is factual and clearly not designed to cover debate over the merits of the initiative -- which surprises me given the Courier's usual editorial practice around political issues. But there's a certain glow of approval in the headline that leads me to suspect the editors may decide to support a yes vote on this despite its connections to the water issue and what I see as the likely follow-on vote to kill the Big Chino pipeline.

It may surprise some readers to learn that while I would very happily turn off the tap on that boondoggle, I don't support this method for doing it.

I've spoken with George Seaman at length about this. George insists that while he supports the initiative he is not in a leadership position, and that while many of the people involved have been in the pipeline fight for years and there are no other projects of eligible size on the horizon, the initiative is not about the pipeline per se.

George was able to address some of my concerns about the initiative. I've looked at the text and it seems to be competently written. But I won't support it.

Governance by popular initiative was one of the great progressive ideas of the late 19th century, and many of the new states of that time built it into their constitutions. The upshot for us in Arizona in the early 21st century has been a general hog-tying of government at the behest of narrow, monied interests, often based outside our state, using simplistic and misleading propaganda to stampede people into hasty and ill-considered decisions -- exactly the sort of thing that representative government was designed to prevent.

I hasten to add that I don't think this particular group has a hidden agenda or is using malicious tactics, although if Cindy's competent coverage is any indication, the insistence that it's not about the pipeline is clearly not sticking.

Rather, I'm concerned that putting this idea into play will bring exactly the sort of acute and arbitrary problems we see every year at the capitol into city government, and prevent the sort of big, long-range thinking we most need.

Its supporters think it's reasonable to trust the voters to make better decisions on big spending than their elected officials. Its detractors will say trust the elected officials, not the mob. My concern is that if this thing wins we'll have to trust the propagandists, who are cagier than both and generally win the fight. Speaking as a professional propagandist, I say don't trust us, brother, this group will rob you blind and make you feel good about it.

Marines exchange fire with Taliban in searing heat (update)

This AP story mysteriously dropped out of the sky onto the Courier website this afternoon. The paper's usual practice has been to use wire stories as inside filler and leave them off the site, since the site doesn't need filler to support the advertising on the edges. Maybe we're seeing a change in policy, and maybe someone just goofed up.

But this may spark up another round of controversy over local vs. general content, with some demanding that the paper furnish national news (with what pages? That takes ad revenue) and others demanding it keep the messy old world off their doorsteps.

I can't see how the Courier can either make any money with or do a useful job of national/world news, and there's plenty of that available already. (If you want that through the Courier site, think partnerships and sponsored links.) I think it could do a lot more with state news, particularly what's going on at the capitol and how it affects rural AZ. But hard local news should always be the main game.

5pm: I notice on VerdeNews.com just the sort of hard info I suggested above. We should see this in the Courier every week, at least. I notice some good original writing over there from the capitol as well. How is it that the Verde crew can afford this, but the Courier won't even carry it?

Open thread, Thursday edition

See anything strange today?

DeMocker remains in jail awaiting trial on one-year anniversary of Carol Kennedy's death

Something about this piece smells bad to me. First I notice that other than marking the anniversary of the widely beloved teacher's death, there is no actual news here. We get the all the news value from the ridiculously long headline. Nothing's happened, there's no new information. Then there's the defense attorney making assertions about the evidence or lack of it, while the prosecutors must follow the straight and narrow path and refrain from comment. I have to wonder whether the defense isn't playing the Courier for a mistrial. In any case it looks like a poor use of column inches.

Editorial: Let's behave like adults on budget

The unnamed Courier editor tells us that all politicians are venal and corrupt, then plaintively asks, "Is it too much to expect adult behavior from all concerned?"

As far as I've seen, and I watch pretty closely, the Courier neither wrote nor carried anything about the budget process until the session was already officially over. It failed to note that the legislative leadership ignored Gov. Napolitano's sensible and on-time budget proposal, thinking they'd get a better deal from her successor. It missed that Gov. Brewer refused to give the Legislature any budget plan other than press releases until a couple of weeks ago. It ignored the process in the Legislature, where a few radical rightwingers held everyone hostage to their idea that the best government is a dead one, and where both House and Senate leadership held up all other business while they worked out pointless deals in back rooms, leaving the bulk of both bodies twiddling their thumbs for months. It failed to share with us that the Legislature and the Governor were working on budget shortfall numbers that were a billion bucks different, predicting this cartoon train wreck over two months ago.

The editor's inclusion of the Dems in his broad slander of everyone down there is particularly idiotic, since the Dems have had exactly no input on the budget or anything else since Napolitano wisely moved on.

No, editor, it's not fair to smear the blame across all desks and both sides of the aisles. This mess can be very clearly laid to the proudly stupid radical rightists in the Legislature and our own Governor Peter Principle, who oddly enough is as close to an adult as we've seen down there in her clear understanding from the beginning that we aren't gonna get out of this jam without some new revenue.

It's supremely easy to say that we can solve a budget problem by "saying no to spending." What's not so easy is identifying exactly where to cut that won't hurt people we can't afford to hurt and create more problems and cost elsewhere. It's an article of faith that government spends too much, but like any faith, it's based more on myth than science.

The solid core of the budget collapse is that Arizona's economy has been based for decades on building new houses, stores, roads and infrastructure, neglecting the industrial and agricultural bases necessary to make that growth sustainable. Any 13-year-old Sim Earth player could have told us that this was coming 20 years ago.

Our collective failure to walk around this obvious hole in the road came about in large part because of our active discouragement of smart, visionary people from getting involved in the political process, leaving it instead largely to the zealots and egotists who don't care that people like the editor constantly accuse anyone in the game of corruption and venality. It's self-fulfilling.

If we want better government, adult government, we have to spend the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff, ignore party labels and encourage smart, competent and committed people to do this important work. It ain't for the money, that's for sure, so let's at least try to give them some respect.

But, almost as important, we need to pay attention to the process and insist that our elected representatives get the job done in a sensible way. Essential to that is good, factual information about what's going on, as well as good thinking and analysis based on that information, and that's where our news professionals have the most responsibility. That's you, Mr Editor. You failed to inform the boss that the employees were screwing around in the powder shed, after you egged them on for years to screw around in exactly this manner. Boom. Now you point the finger. Spare me.

Talk of the Town: 'La Raza' has land title backwards

Judy Dutko writes, "One of the precepts of La Raza, which means "The Race," is that the U.S. stole the American Southwest from Mexico." First I went to the la Raza website to check that statement, and found these:

The term “La Raza” has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as “the people” or, according to some scholars, as “the Hispanic people of the New World.” The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions.

(I work in the translation game, and deal daily with the misconceptions of amateur translators and resulting problems, so this doesn't surprise me a bit.)

Another misconception about NCLR is the allegation that we support a “Reconquista,” or the right of Mexico to reclaim land in the southwestern United States. NCLR has not made and does not make any such claim; indeed, such a claim is so far outside of the mainstream of the Latino community that we find it incredible that our critics raise it as an issue.

Ms Dutko, who claims to have been a high-school teacher, goes on to detail a version of the history of American acquisition of Mexican territory by settlement and war, asserting that it proves that the U.S. took this land legally. But on several readings of this account, I can't see how the reader could conclude anything other than that the U.S. took the Southwest from Mexico by force, not just by stealing, but by armed robbery. George Seaman gets it right in the comments. Then she tops it off triumphantly with "Contrary to La Raza's claim that we stole the Southwest, note that Mexico held title to it for only 27 years." Um, I suspect that if Ms Dutko owned a car for 27 years and someone came with a gun, threatened her with it and drove off in the car, she would likely conclude that she'd been robbed.

OK, so we have a writer who freely spouts untruths about a favorite right-wing whipping boy, then applies her historical knowledge to prove the idea she intends to disprove. Why should I care?

It's like this. Had the editors left the piece as an LTE, there'd be no foul. The reader could take it as the hamhanded rant it is. But by elevating this ignorant, radical-right harangue to Talk of the Town status, they give it the paper's endorsement as a worthwhile, professional view. Bad choice, guys. If you really want to promote these dumb ideas, at least pick someone who doesn't trip over her own shoelaces doing it. Columns are also subject to fact-checking, or at least they are in professional operations.

Oh, and could someone please go back through the records and find the kids Ms Dutko taught in school? They probably need some remedial help.

Open thread, Wednesday edition

What did you notice today?

State workers to report to work as scheduled (update)

This short piece, credited to Paul Davenport (AP), appeared early this morning. Given the usual depth of Davenport's reporting, I have to think the Courier chopped it down to almost nothing, and I'll watch for it elsewhere on the web to check it. For now, here's what real reporting looks like, and oddly enough the Reps don't come off looking quite so good.

But I'm sure the Courier waved the red machete on this one because there just wasn't enough space on its website. (If you buy that I've got a great deal for you on the Pioneer Parkway bridge. Cash only.)

I expect this is a placeholder for another press release from Andy Tobin shortly to tell Prescott what really went down.

4:39PM: OK, I found it at azfamily.com, and my news nose did not lie, the Courier only ran half the story. Here's the rest:

The Arizona Legislature completed action on budget bills to implement most of a compromise $8.4 billion budget negotiated with Gov. Jan Brewer. However, lawmakers omitted a sales tax increase that Brewer wants to help reduce spending cuts.

The Senate approved the bills early Wednesday morning, about three hours after the House's action just before midnight Tuesday.

Lawmakers missed the Arizona Constitution's deadline of midnight for approval of a new state budget.

The bill's ultimate fate remains in question as it is now up to Brewer to decide whether to sign or veto them.

Spokesman Paul Senseman won't say what Brewer will do, but he says Brewer still wants the sales-tax measure.