Where's the candidate forum?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why this recession is different

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

Graphs help

Jailbreak followup:

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

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

Editorial: It's a crucial year for Arizona education

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Incredible Invisible Dems, Greens and Libs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update, Wednesday: Another one.

The birthright-citizenship thing

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

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

The new Republican economic catechism

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

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

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

3 inmates escape from Kingman prison

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

Must-read

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

Wiederaenders: Technology, rules grow exponentially

Tim writes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conflict sells, I guess

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 20, 2010 -- Dear Editor:

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

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

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

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

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

Candace McNulty

Followup, Thursday: The Courier does it again today.

Prescott BBQ Days

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

LWV registration event Sunday morning

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

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

Dirty Water

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial: Feds say one thing and do another

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wiederaenders: Writing on the 1070 wall

It comes out: For Tim, the Constitution is a "technicality."

For no reason I can see, first Tim extensively quotes a press release by Speaker Kirk Adams that's nothing more than a clumsy political frame for the legal issue against 1070. Then he indirectly lays out the true purpose of 1070, which is not to pass court muster or do anything about the phony "immigration problem," but simply to stain Democrats and anyone else who rightfully stands against it as "immigration lovers" -- to win election points. But even though it's right there in print, I have a feeling that Tim doesn't quite connect the dots on this yet.

Yes, the federal court will strike 1070 down -- it's clearly illegal -- and yes, that may push some undereducated citizens to vote R in November. If voters were better informed about how our layered government works, this schoolyard ploy would fall flat, but there's no hope of it at this point. Whether it will be significant in federal-level polls is an open question, and we're already expecting more radical rightism in the statehouse, so I don't see it altering the political landscape much by itself. It may help balance those who come out to vote for medical marijuana, raising participation in the midterm overall.

As for embarrassing the President, Tim, I'm afraid Mr Obama has much bigger fish to fry than worrying about the antics of Jan Brewer, Russell Pearce and Sheriff Joe. Let's have a little perspective, shall we?

Editorial: Smoki People had good intentions

The Smoki kick just goes on, although I expect it's is a conscious effort to publicize the current exhibit at the Smoki Museum, which is not a bad thought. Perhaps the editor should spend some time at the exhibit himself. In writing today's editorial, he clearly hasn't read the literature closely.

In defending the intentions of the old Smoki, he kicks right off on the wrong foot:

"Laboring under the misconception that the Native American culture was vanishing, the group decided to put on a show mirroring Southwest and Plains Indian dances."

In point of fact, in the late teens and early '20s traveling, professional Wild West shows were popular entertainments, and the Prescott business community simply decided to try raising money by putting on an amateur version. The fake Indian dance was only one scene in the show, and there's no evidence that it was researched at all, or that it had any more to do with the idea of preserving Indian culture than the contemporary minstrel shows of the South were about preserving black culture there. For them it was just a goof, like the Kiwanis jug band.

Their intentions were not about the Indians, they were about money and having fun, and the Smoki maintained that tradition for almost 70 years. The high-minded 'preservation' idea came later, grafted on to create a paternalistic public face for the group, and eventually they all came to believe it. But to maintain that belief they had to willfully ignore the express wishes of the people they were supposedly honoring -- for decades.

Now, says the editor,

"The Smoki Museum is striving to make amends for slights the Native American people feel by incorporating their input in planning the exhibit "The Sign of Smoki: Art & Artistry of Prescott's Smoki People." ... a plan is in the works to bring together tribal leaders in a discussion that would conciliate any bad feelings that remain over the Smoki People"

The editor is about five years late to the party.

Under its first professional director, JT Tannous, in 2005 the Museum began reaching out to the native people of this region, adjusting its mission and practices, creating a native advisory board, cleaning funerary objects out of its collection, and putting together the permanent Smoki People exhibit, both as history and public amends. The museum now has a native director as well, and is well on its way to winning trust, expunging the stain of Smoki that spoils all of Prescott for natives across the region, and moving toward its goal of becoming a respected resource for Southwest anthropology and culture by directly involving the people who made that history.

And about those intentions the editor hopes to credit: pavers on the road to hell, as I recall. Let's focus more on actions, we'll get more good teaching moments that way.

"Let us hope that we can now lay to rest controversy over the Smoki People," says the editor in fatherly benediction. Sorry, Tim, you're in too big a hurry. Give it another 30 years, and try to keep the facts straight. Above all, avoid attempts to paper over and wish away the ugliness of the insult, which only makes it worse.

Again, readers, if you hope to understand this story with any degree of accuracy, go to the source.