Editorial: We're closing in on political accountability

The unnamed Courier editor assigns homework for readers on election candidates, inadvertently illustrating his own narrow and cynical view of elections and candidates.

First, the cynicism. He hawks up a pretty ugly list of descriptors for a campaign season only just begun: mudslinging, accusations, inflated promises, deflated expectations, promise "more," dirtier, wild accusations, nastiness and divisions. He says, in essence, "don't listen to anything the candidates say, as they can't be trusted to act like adults." In how he calls for a "higher standard," he sets the bar really low.

The editor exhorts readers to make a little list, then tells them which issues should be on it: "the economy," secure borders, and illegal immigration, these last two being of course the same. Unfortunately, only two of the many people we will be hiring in this election will have much of anything to do with these vague issues, and they distract from the business of governing. These are the hot-button teevee issues, the newstainment that confounds our social sanity.

Further, while I firmly agree with the editor on the overarching concept of voters educating themselves and doing the homework, it strikes me that as the policy leader of our community's newsprint monopoly, he bears more responsibility that anyone else in building the information infrastructure that allows voters to inform themselves.

The founders of this country built a free press into our national fabric not because they liked reading papers per se, but because they understood that effective self-governance is only possible where the people are fully informed about what their elected representatives are doing. The free press has had its fluctuations in how well it has fulfilled this responsibility, and unfortunately we're in one of its seedier and more feckless swings now. There's little we can do about King Teevee, I'm afraid, but the editor is a member of this community and can be held to account. Continuous positive pressure from readers will push him to raise his own standard for finding and furnishing information that matters in electing representatives of quality.

So yes, voters, do your homework. But don't make it about distractions designed to divert you from substance. Meet the candidates, ask questions to determine how well they understand the jobs they seek, find out about their work ethic, their relative devotion to ideology or practicality, their tendency to rule or serve, their ability to get people working together. These qualities will tell you far more than pat answers on hot-button issues.

And editor, get to your knitting. So far your quality of service to the community around elections has ranged from shallow to blatantly self-serving. Exert yourself, bury your prejudices and try to be the sort of newsman we can all be proud of.

No, he didn't. Not yet.

I cannot imagine how the editors justify today's Page 1 headline, "ELECTION: Tobin easily takes one of two LD1 seats," without admitting that they're doing all they can to throw the election to the Rs. I challenge them to try.

I don't need to clarify for any reader of this blog that this was a primary election, meaning the winners have won the privilege of standing for the real election. Rep Tobin has won nomination, not the seat.

Yet the entire article is written as if he had. While Mr Campbell contemplates a vacation and Ms Fann gets back to work on campaigning, Mr Tobin " will head to Phoenix Tuesday to resume work on the budget," as if he's already been rehired and needn't worry about campaigning further.

As analysis (opinion) you can get away with writing that the "likely" or even "likeliest" result of this is that Mr Tobin will return to the House, but saying that he already has is not just obviously wrong, it's bound to be confusing to many voters. The editors may have forgotten, but we fickle voters could very well elect Ms Fann and Ms Bell and leave Mr Tobin to his tea-party organizing. Ten weeks have yet to tell the tale.

Hayworth wins!

“Today, the Republican party of Arizona nominated for Senate JD Hayworth in the shell of a politician that was once John McCain. The complete takeover of the Republican party by the Tea Party has included taking over the soul of a Senator who was once the face of comprehensive immigration reform and who now would just build the ‘danged fence;’ a man who once reveled in being a maverick and who now is a rubber stamp for the extreme rightwing; a man whose name was synonymous with campaign finance reform and who now barely registers a notice when the law that bears his name was gutted by the Supreme Court to favor corporate America. So, we congratulate JD Hayworth on his nomination tonight,” said DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan.

Debate: Should a mosque be built near Ground Zero?

I really can't pass this one up. For anyone who takes seriously our Constitution and our heritage as a free nation, the answer to the overarching question is obvious and unalloyed. Americans do not discriminate against religion. Period.

Leave aside that what's planned for lower Manhattan is not a mosque, and that it's being planned by Sufis, who are to al Qaeda's radical Wahabbis as free-love Jesus freaks are to Inquisition Catholics. Leave aside that the people involved are not in any way related to the criminal zealots who took down the towers. Never mind that they have clearly and repeatedly expressed their mission in terms of healing and solidarity against terrorism. Leave aside the distress of a few revenge-addled relatives of terrorism victims. None of this matters in light of the larger principle.

Freedom to practice religion is a sacred founding right of this nation, and our fundamental rights are never subject to votes or current public opinion. If that ever happens, this nation is well and fairly lost, and to the extent that we tolerate public "debate" like this, we shame ourselves. There is no equivalency here, no reasonable "other side."

Now knock it off. This is another phony issue raised by evil, power-hungry men and promoted by money-grubbing corporations to make you angry and careless about your vote. Don't fall for it.

Dentists push Gosar fundraising to top in crowded CD1 primary race

Joanna is taking a lot of heat in the comments over her citation that Gosar led Beauchamp in the tea-party poll. Coupled with Beauchamp's clear identification with the tea-party crowd, the pure volume of comments and lack of refutations made it inevitable that the story would need correcting, and a correction indeed appeared this afternoon. Take care of those tea partiers, they bite.

The real question is: where was the editor when this counterintuitive 'fact' showed up in Joanna's story? Did s/he leave Joanna out there on her own?

Between Beauchamp's tea-party endorsement, Gosar's Palin endorsement and the red-meat-addicted R primary voters, we can be pretty confident that Rusty Bowers, the only credible Rep in the race, will go down in flames, leaving a reasonable and experienced D up against a nutbar, amateur R in a Dem-leaning district.

Wiederaenders: Courier is working to catch 'mythtakes'

Tim responds to a reader complaining about "letters to the editor that present 'facts' as 'truth'," implying that he intends to fact-check such letters and do something unspecified about them. He tangents into a comment on "policing the online comments," citing "libel" and "fighting words."

"Have we made 'mythtakes'? Of course," he admits, but then shows that he doesn't really understand what that means, defending himself with, "There's always another side to the story, folks." No Tim, there are sides to a story, but not to facts -- facts don't take sides. "Fact" is the value the reader (and I!) want you to uphold separate from opinion, slant, analysis, dogma and human interest. You missed the point, and with your cute and folksy stylings you denigrate your own integrity.

I also notice painfully that you're willing to step up in response to criticism of letter and anonymous comment writers, who have no impact on the value of your product, but not the more serious criticism of the Courier's own myth-propagation and failures to fact-check. A regular and serious ombudsman's column, along with policy enforcement in response to it and real change, will go a long way to repairing the Courier's awful reputation and giving it a chance of survival in a future that's all about trust.

Editorial: Iraq War's purpose still unclear as troops return

Catching up on my writing after a few "days off" (read: real life), this headline would make me laugh out loud if the Bush apologists had been less successful in muddying American minds about the debacle we now refer to collectively as "Iraq."

Many readers are too young to remember the events of the late '80s that led us directly here, and generations have grown up since the US began running the serious dirty tricks in the region that brought Saddam Hussein to power. If you don't know this history, I'm sorry, it's too complicated for a blog, read a book. But what I can say definitively is that there has never been any question among serious people as to what has motivated the US to intervene militarily in Iraq -- not now, not in 2003, not in 1990, and not before. The US has only one practical strategic goal in the region, and that's to secure the supply of oil. Everything else derives from that -- including, ultimately, the politely termed "defense" of Israel. If you think you've got a cogent argument against that, you're allowing yourself to be bamboozled.

So no, editor, it's not "Washington's responsibility to see Iraq as a country and not as a war." It's our responsibility to see Iraq as a sovereign people and not as a strategic resource.

The editor writes, "scholars will dissect the past seven and a half years and no doubt will find elements of fault, deception and untold costs of human life and money," as if the reporting on what actually happened versus what you, editor, would have had us believe was happening* is some sort of academic exercise for the enlightenment of future generations.

*: Like this. Or this. Or this, fer gadsake. More lies here. More prevarication here. Ack.

The hard truth for the editor to swallow is that he has allowed himself to be deceived by better propagandists about the Iraq adventure for years. There has never been any serious doubt that the war was venally motivated, illegal, and doomed to abject failure and horrible follow-on consequences in a hundred predictably duh-level ways. But because empty-headed flag-wavers wanted to feel heroic and hit back a someone Arab-looking for 9-11, and because small men saw it, accurately, as a way to win power for themselves, we killed at least half a million innocent Iraqis. That was not an academic exercise, and it will haunt us for yet more generations.

No, editor, you can't get off that easy. That flag you're waving is missing its drape of mourning for our victims and our national integrity.

PS: My nephew is a casualty of the Iraq adventure, by the way. That's not academic, either. Our troops and their families deserve to know clearly what their sacrifices were meant to accomplish. Above all, it was never "our freedom."

Band coverage!

Thanks to Steve for his review of Down, Boy! in the online edition, and to Bruce for working in a reference to it in print. Read more on the band and hear samples at BigDaddyDBlues.com.

I'm happy to take the Muddy reference, but I haven't much use for Canned Heat. And as for "a repeat winner of our Courier Reader of the Week award," I'm afraid I'm still trying to work out where I can hang all those testimonial plaques.

And seriously, is it really so hard to get my name right? Gad.

Editorial: Don't pass the buck - take a stand

Following up on Monday's editorial, today the unnamed Courier editor nearly clarifies his position. He wants the gate open, and he wants the homeless cleared from the park, by force.

Having penned the Orwellian phrase, "a concerted coalition of resources to humanely clear the park of the offending population," he goes on to exhort Council to "provide leadership" in attacking "the root of the problem," which is clearly "unsavory" people who don't have anyplace better to sleep.

The preference for the use of force is obvious. But he hasn't apparently thought about what to do after these "offending" people are in handcuffs. Put them in jail? Put them on a bus for parts unknown? Maybe have them camp out in the editor's back yard?

Just as locking the gate won't prevent "pillage" in the shopping center, simplistic thinking will do nothing to improve any aspect of this issue.

ToMA: : 1070's logic is all in the Constitution

In today's Talk of My Ass, Ken Singer admits right off that he really doesn't have the background to say anything definitive about 1070, then proceeds to assert definitive authority on it. Do I really need to bother taking this apart? Why do the editors insist on putting column slugs on letters to the editor?

Mr Singer attempts through the logical fallacy of false equivalence to prove that 1070 is constitutionally legal. His argument fundamentally follows the well-worn path of state's rights over federal law, which has proved reliably futile in federal court.

Thrashing around for grounds, he comes up with ludicrous examples. "The federal government regulates interstate commerce. However, if you drive from Arizona to California on I-40, you will note that the speed limit on a federal interstate highway is regulated by each state," prateth he, but to me this only illustrates that driving on a highway by itself is not commerce (duh). I don't see big rigs changing their safety specs when they cross the border, though. "Although the federal government regulates citizenship, residency requirements between Arizona and Nevada are different for divorce," writes Mr Singer. And what exactly does divorce have to do with citizenship, hm?

He natters on with all the familiar nonsense about the phony immigration problem, drawing cracked and far-from-original conclusions from premises based on falsehoods ad misperceptions.

If this were labeled as a letter, I wouldn't care. The column treatment conveys the illusion of authority to speak, which this piece clearly does not deserve. Waste of time and bad editorial choice.

China surges past Japan as No. 2 economy; US next?

Half the story is missing from this AP feature, carried on 5A in the print edition. The editors loved the headline, which they slugged at the top of 1A, no doubt for its sensational effect. In the part the editors left out, Chinese officials admit that this supposed milestone is nothing to crow about, because it means that on a per-capita basis China's people are on average now one-tenth as wealthy as the average Japanese.

This gives us a chance to ponder on how insignificant facts can be processed into scary fantasies.

ToMA: Nothing partisan about new local group

I am very proud to report that a group of readers has independently gone after the lies of Monte Crooks and utterly dismantled them in the comments, quoting chapter and verse. It's a pity the editors didn't bother to do this before publishing the piece in the paper, where the rebuttals will be two or three weeks coming if "space" allows.

I saw this crap for what it was on first read, but the commenters did my work for me. Bravo!

Editorial: Separating campaign fiction from facts

Rummaging around in a dusty attic full of long-disused things, a surprised Courier editorial board stumbled over a small, shabby box labeled "Journalistic Integrity." Just for a giggle they took the machine out of the box and found that after all these election years it still works like a charm.

Readers are hoping that they can find room for it on the kitchen counter among all the shiny modern appliances and put it back to regular work. The cooking was so much better when it was the primary tool.

I thought about checking the archives to see how long it's been since the unnamed editor wrote exactly the opposite of this, but, naah. Let's enjoy it while it lasts. Here's a yummy cookie. I haven't had to make a batch in quite a while.

Alert! Marauders pillaging Prescott businesses!

Today the unnamed Courier editor tells us the fence gate into Granite Creek Park is controversial because merchants say "vagrants travel to and from the park through that path and pillage their stores and loiter on the shopping center's sidewalks."

"Pillage"? Is the editor off his meds, or is looting going on at the Depot Marketplace, and somehow I missed it?

Okay, let's say the editor just wanted a more colorful word than "shoplifting," and just hasn't enough respect for words to care what they mean, rather than that he wants to exaggerate the scale of the problem and scare his readers with images of hordes of Huns tearing up the produce section at Albertson's. Let's move on to the logic here.

Say you're homeless, broke, dry and hanging out in the park one day, and you feel the urge for a hair of the dog. You know there's lightly guarded likker on the shelves at Walgreens next door. You head in that direction, but there's a locked gate. What do you do?

My guess is that you'll walk a couple blocks around the fence, drop into Walgreens and pocket a quick pint anyway, slipping out past the overburdened and none-too-nimble staff. And since the gate is locked, you'll go around the back to the loading dock area to quaff your prize before stumbling back around the fence to the public jons.

What world does the editor inhabit, wherin a chain-link gate is going to make any substantial difference to someone dealing daily with the grinding, ordinary challenges of homelessness?

It's perfectly clear that this isn't about loitering or pillaging, this is about keeping unsightly people away from Everyone's Hometown Shopping Center (and in the park instead, by the way). We don't care who they are, how they got there or where else they might go, we just want them gone. We know intellectually that there are problems for people in the real world, we just don't want to see the real world every day. That would be "shoving it in our faces," where we might have to think about it. Let it be someone else's problem.

The drag is that harassing homeless people enough to move them elsewhere doesn't work. They don't find out by broadcast text message that Granite Creek Park is off limits. They don't use hobo sign anymore. They just show up. And we run them off again, and they show up again.

If the problem is really so large, maybe the Council ought to ask whether the downtown businesses would like to contribute to funding and staffing a shelter where most of these "vagrants," as the editor characterizes them so charitably, can find safety and some basic resources for getting off the street. How about some put-up-or-shut-up action, hm? How about working to help solve a problem? And where's the editor been on a problem that people have been moaning about ineffectually for decades?

The editor mentions "three publics" toward the end, missing an important one: the people who use the park as a thoroughfare and would like to shop in the Marketplace or elsewhere downtown. See, the editor can't imagine any respectable person traveling our city without a car.

Why we should always read skeptically

Today's cribbed Game & Fish press release carries an object lesson in the reliability of self-generated news stories and why newspapers have to investigate stories carefully if they are to maintain their own credibility.

Back in the "Getting Out" section we find "Central figure in Macho B incident to pay $8,000 fine," slugged "Special to the Courier", by which we understand that the Courier got it whole and ran it unedited, i.e. a press release. In it we find the Game and Fish Commission fining the guy who originally trapped the last jaguar in AZ and revoking his game privileges for a "prohibited take," meaning he baited and intentionally trapped the animal illegally while working as a contractor on a Game & Fish cougar study. He also drew five years' probation and a $1,000 fine in criminal court.

Comparing this end-of-the-legal-road story with the first report on the incident back in February '09 is illuminating. In that press release, carried here, Game & Fish wrote that "The male cat was incidentally captured" by the department during the study -- by accident, in other words. They collared him and released him, but recaptured him after his movements seemed wrong, diagnosed him with terminal kidney failure and killed him, setting off a small but firm national wave of outrage. News stories like this focused on that decision and how it was reached, but generally glossed over the original capture, which no cat-owner will deny very likely precipitated the health problem (if there was one) and the cat's death.

The outrageous inaccuracy of the agency's first release, whether intentional, mistaken or just sloppy, should raise hackles in the Governor's office and red flags in every newsroom. For readers, when you see "Special to the Courier," you should read it as "Unsubstantiated Happy Talk and Lies." For the editors, I'd recommend you quit running press releases as news without checking them. No serious news organization does this. If you must carry them, label them properly and protect yourself from what's in them, because readers tend to assume you're actually doing your job.

Casserly: Prescott a microcosm of health care's future

I've been watching the recently-recurring column of JJ Casserly for a little while to get a bead on where this " longtime newsman and author" is coming from. From traces left on the Net, he ghostwrote an autobiography of Barry Goldwater in the '80s, apparently worked for the Republic for a while, and claims to have covered the Vatican "for years."

JJ's pieces have been more or less innocuous till now, but today he steps over the line into right-wing scare propaganda with this piece on Medicare.

JJ parrots Republican talking points designed to frighten you about health-care reform. The "no one has read it" canard is a quick tipoff for anyone paying attention to the slant here.

He leads off with "the Obama administration will cut present Medicare payments by $529 billion." This is a lie. JJ knows that when he writes "Medicare payments," most readers will think it means "payments to doctors for my care." The $529 billion figure (in reality, about $500 billion) is a ten-year goal for cost savings in Medicare by reducing fraud, abuse and inefficiencies within this gargantuan program. $200 billion of that will come relatively quickly with elimination of Medicare Advantage, a Bush-era program designed to line the already fat pockets of the HMOs we all hate. The legislation specifically forbids reduction of benefits to achieve that goal.

"Health experts say it will be impossible to get the massive enterprise up and running within a year or two," says Casserly -- yup, and that's why most of its benefits don't begin before 2014. I expect he's quoting experts who are in favor of the new system, even advising the administration. But he's flipped the implication to support his thesis. This makes it a lie.

JJ quotes Barnett saying, "What the feds will do is create greater rationing of dollars, cutting their payments to doctors and hospitals. That will ration care," indicating that he does not know what's in the legislation in terms of legal language or intent. What's true is that the system -- not yet operating, remember -- requires that Medicare maintain benefit levels. Notice also that he doesn't touch on the influence of varying state laws and policies on how to distribute Medicare funds. We're seeing lots of problems now because state legislators are raiding the cookie jar, and unraveling that will be a broader challenge than implementing the Affordable Care Act.

Probably the most egregious violation of journalistic ethics comes with this: "Barnett is concerned about the latitude that the Department of Health and Human Services will have in interpreting the new law. Bureaucrats will have absolute power in many health decisions. Just how fair and balanced they may be is open to question." This and a later graf evoke the "death panels" lie, and its the big lie. In point of simple fact, the system will allow no legal interference or influence by the bureaucracy on doctor-patient decisions. That's a problem created by HMOs, and an important part of what the new law is designed to fix.

JJ even tosses the phony illegal-immigration bomb. I'm sorely disappointed that the Courier has brought on yet another regular columnist who has so little respect for his readers that he'll lie and cheat to convince readers to vote his way. Shame on him, and shame on the editors.

Ack

It just confirms all your worst feelings about humanity, dunnit?

Man arrested for allegedly stealing Emmett Trapp family fund donations

Be afraid! Minions of Dr Evil seen in Preskit

George Soros is here and determined to take over the world! Or at least a few nice luncheons and rallies.

Responding to today's ToT, this afternoon I attended a little rally on the Triangle, which I learned was the first event organized by a new local group affiliated with Moveon.org. With between 35 and 50 people ranged around the circle, several speakers preached to the converted as passing motorists responded to the colorful signs-on-a-stick (anything is better on a stick, don't you think?) with honks and thumb-ups.

Following up on the opinion piece, the main topic was the influence of corporate interests and money on our electoral and legislative processes. The speakers were earnest, but claimed no expertise on the issue, and I felt better informed about what they have in mind and inspired by the ToT than by the speeches. Note to Moveon: waving signs at cars is OK, but you'll change a lot more minds by engaging people who aren't already in your camp.

In the course of his talk, Bill Swahlen admitted that the credit for the ToT should go to BHS history teacher and coach Jon Vick, seen previously on the opinion page here and here. Jon told me he's taken some hits for speaking up, with people questioning his qualification to teach because they don't agree with his political opinions, hence the passing of the credit. I'd just like to encourage Jon to speak up more and consider greater involvement in politics. Our community needs more committed, articulate, energetic and personable leaders like him.

Ken Hedler was there taking names and notes, so look for a Courier report on the rally in the days ahead. I saw no other media people.

Editorial: GOP primary not about only illegals

Today the unnamed Courier editor asserts that "Candidates who take political advantage of immigration by neglecting other issues are as dangerous as voters who do the same thing." I agree, but there are two ways to look at this piece.

The first is to take it at face value. The editor would like to move the public discussion off its focus on immigration to more important things. This echoes the response of Senator Steve Pierce to the first question in last Wednesday's candidate forum. The entire editorial could be read as a rewrite of the senator's 90-second answer.

On the other hand, candidates taking political advantage of the phony immigration issue and neglecting others are following the standard GOP playbook this year. Could it be that the editor is saying, "most GOP candidates are dangerous"? Given the Courier's history, I rather doubt this would get through the editorial board.

The nagging question is why the Senator and the editor would try to soft-pedal being on the right side of what the Rs see as a 70+-percent positive issue among the public at large. Why not lean into immigration as a sure winner? How can the editor write, "immigration is hardly the lead dog in a pack of issues," when that is obviously untrue in terms of real political rhetoric?

How about this:

Saying the right things about illegal immigration is necessary to winning the R primary (the rightward version of political correctness), so every R running for a seat is saying those things, which negates the value of the issue in the primary. If everyone's saying it, there's no differentiation among candidates. Looking past the primary, the zealotry over the immigration issue becomes a negative in attracting moderate voters (and there are a lot more of us with serious concerns about how this is shaking out than the R polls suggest). So ramping down the rhetoric at this point and pushing the real nutbars into the closet until after November is a canny move politically.

So ultimately I agree with the editor that immigration-happy candidates are dangerous. But I'm guessing the editor is saying this for different purposes. Illustrating the piece with the GOP logo is a hint.

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.