Amster: Shall we wall in the entire nation?

Great column by Randall today -- erudite, well reasoned, well written, passionate and persuasive. Just go read.

Editorial: Teachers can't seem to get a break today

The unnamed Courier editor gets it right today in calling the HUSD Board on its egregious disrespect for the retiring teachers it put on the agenda to honor. It's fine as far as it goes.

What bugs me is that he can get exercised over whether the board got the ceremonial pins right, but he can't get interested in improving teacher compensation and working conditions, what we most need to attract and keep those great teachers he claims to appreciate. That's the kind of "break" our teachers -- and our kids -- really need.

Good point: "Tri-City Educator" comments --

If the Courier is so concerned about the recognition, then why haven't they honored these tremendous individuals in the newspaper?

Rooting for Rapture

They tell us that devout and carefully vetted Xtians will float off the planet on Saturday, and I'm all for it. It'll wipe out our unemployment problem, taxpaying businesses will be able to move into the abandoned church real estate, and we'll be able to replace half our Legislature with representatives who are better grounded, so to speak. It may also relieve us from letters like Holly Schrader's today.

PS: The word "rapture" derives from the same Latin root as "rape," originally meaning to be carried away. Need I say more?

Update, Saturday: Drat. It appears that either the math was off again, or perhaps the Big Guy in the Sky looked down and decided that we're all gonna have to go through the Tribulation together. (What if you gave a Rapture and nobody qualified?)

Your tax dollars at work

I'm moving the post below slightly because of consistent hack attacks on it.

Editorial: Community garden helps in tough times

Community garden in Alpharetta, GA

I love the community-garden concept. It brings people together to build community and improve the environment while providing better food and teaching self-sufficiency skills to young and old. Had the editor focused on those values, he'd be munching a nice cookie right now. Instead heruns down a rabbit trail that has to be amusing for every home gardener, and shows pretty clearly that the editor understands neither gardening nor its economics or larger values.

The editor comes at it from the angle of high food prices, implying that gardens like this provide cheap food, and apparently concluding that a third of an acre of vegetables can have a significant economic effect.

I imagine home gardeners all over Prescott having a deep chuckle over this. The editor seems to imagine that growing your own food is free.

I sincerely doubt that anyone growing less than an acre of single crop in this area is producing anything for significantly less on average than they could get it in a store, even if they don't account their hours of labor. The water, the seeds and seedlings, the compost and other soil amendments, the critter barriers and repellents, the support structures, the weather barriers, it adds up fast if you want a nice tomato.

Ask a family farmer. Those folks aren't exactly rolling in dough lately.

No, editor, if it was about cost we'd all be picking over the trash bins at Wal-Mart. Growing your own is about knowing where it comes from, exactly what's in it, and the satisfaction of making something beautiful and tasty. These are values you can't buy, so there's no way to compare the pricing.

When you fold in the amount of time it takes, a garden absolutely cannot compete with agribusiness on a dollar basis. The idea is ludicrous.

A community garden is a great place to learn and share, and I have no doubt that for the 70 or so households able to participate in this one, it'll be fun and rewarding. For the rest of us the project can serve as an example and inspiration to spur similar projects elsewhere in the community. We have underused plots of land all over town that could be in production right now, cultivated by neighborhood groups, churches, schools and businesses.

Many of our neighbors actively participated in the wartime Liberty Garden effort not so long ago, designed to help reduce retail demand and therefore transportation and labor costs in response to labor* and fuel shortages. Need I point out that current conditions are economically parallel?

Gardening is a great idea in many ways. It's too bad the editor fails to see them.

[Addendum] Note *:  Referring to the shortage of agricultural workers as we scare off Mexicans, of course.

State pulls funding for 9th grade technical classes

Paula gets into the weeds on the budget numbers, but the most important information in this story is missing: a clear explanation of the effects of the cuts.

She references "technical classes" for 9th-graders. What is that? Woodshop? Beautician training? Basic physics? No idea. How does this alter a kid's career path or employment opportunities? No comment. What are the follow-on effects for the community. Eh?

A core reason why many people are so blithe about cutting public spending is that they just don't realize how it will affect them, their neighbors or their families. Here was an opportunity missed.

City manager: What makes "the best" candidate?

In today's "Council direction on city manager search expected at Tuesday meeting," Cindy quotes Laurie Hadley saying that locals "thought it was important to go out there and really search (for the best candidate)" for city manager, and that spending money on a headhunter would accomplish that. To me this clearly illustrates the aridity of the terms of this debate and a generalized lack of both vision and logic at City Hall.

Nowhere in the discussion have I seen any reference to our criteria for hiring the most powerful person in our local government. What exactly makes a good city manager, and how will we find the right fit for Prescott?

In the past these searches have apparently been based entirely on whether the person has previously managed another city of comparable size, and whether he (always he so far) has done an adequate job. In my experience this has led to a succession of generally competent but dully conservative occupants for the office, and unremitting mediocrity in the results.

In my 17 years as a resident, Prescott has failed to progress in any positive way, and has clearly lost some quality of life. We have more big-box shopping at the cost of smaller retailers, more mall space with fewer people shopping in it, fewer middle-income jobs relative to population, more official attention on traffic and less on scenic or neighborhood beauty, and still no sustainable water plan. Our infrastructure spending is at best barely keeping up with maintenance needs. Our economic development department is now focused on tourism. Quality-of-life improvements like the trails network or the YMCA have been exclusively private and nonprofit initiatives. We seriously have to ask ourselves whether this is how we want to continue going about things.

In our form of city government, the Council is equivalent to a board of directors, and the manager to a corporate president. S/he not only carries out the policy requirements set by Council, but s/he also generates many initiatives from staff experience and input. S/he remains in the job as Council members move in and out, and holds the keys to institutional memory and vision. S/he must be both politician and technician, a leader to staff and a servant-leader to Council. Having been involved in City process and observed closely for many years, I'm convinced that the manager has far greater influence on policy and how it's exercised than any elected official can.

So if we're to get off the dime, join the 21st century and have a shot at having Prescott live up to its potential as a great place to live, beyond ordinary managerial skills, the person we pick for that chair must have visionary goals and a chess-player's mind for achieving them. That person is not likely to be out of a job and showing up on every headhunter's list. I think we have to be the headhunter.

Rather than look for the best person available, we should be looking closely at the most successful towns our size across the country and discover what they're doing and how. Then we look for who's making those efforts happen, and when we find a fit, make an offer to attract someone who's already happy in the job.

Will it take a search firm to do that? Probably, but success demands clear direction from us about how to look. I tend to doubt we can find the qualities we need for 20,000 clams. Look what it's got us up to now.

Cantlon: The right is wrong on boosting economy

Great column by Tom today, exposing what the extremists would have us do in their own words. Just go read it. Big cookie.

Editorial: Fear leadership, not shutdown

The unnamed Courier editor posits that a federal government shutdown won't hurt anyone, so there's no reason not to do it. What he fails to offer is why it would be a good thing beyond its entertainment value.

This is another case of arguing from thin air.  The piece assumes that the reader already understands the situation as the editor understands it, and only needs reassurance that the action both the editor and this imaginary reader want will be painless.

It's possible the editor is doing this innocently, naive in the assumption that most everyone is like him. More often writers use this tactic willfully and underhandedly, to lull the reader into the idea that everyone thinks this way and so the reader should too.

The reader should be suspicious of this position, and not just because of the obvious propaganda techniques employed to sell it. A government shutdown does not mean that the government stops working. It means government workers and contractors just don't get paid.

With three wars in the field, this has some pretty serious implications for our military personnel and families. While there is a bill working through to maintain the flow of active military pay, the services that support those personnel aren't in it.

The shutdown will certainly disrupt most federal public services -- courts, parks, highways, health care, food and product safety, supply contracts, patents, housing, reservations, you name it. To say this will carry no pain is, again, naive at best. 

But the gaping hole in the argument is that there really is no reason for the Republicans to withhold their cooperation from the majority in fulfilling the most important responsibility of Congress, other than to make a political point that can only be sensibly translated as "do what I want or I'll take my ball and go home!" The editor seems to be saying that he'd prefer a non-functioning government to one run by Democrats. That's just asinine, as I know a lot of Republicans would agree.

I have no doubt whatever that there will be pain from a shutdown, not least for the Republicans who are engineering it. So if there were no pain for ordinary people, I'd say bring it on, the result will be politically positive. But it's just not like that. Playing brinksmanship for a couple of days won't matter much, but going beyond a week will guarantee real hurt for a lot of Americans.

"Fear leadership"? Does the editor really think that's a sensible idea? Yikes.

'Folk Summit' brings genre's heavy hitters

I just need to point out that Bruce's piece implies that Tom Agostino created "The Folk Sessions" on his own. I'm sure that Tom would not slight the contribution of Alexa MacDonald, who co-hosted the show for years and co-organized the weekly live mini-concerts that evolved into the current series.

Also: KJZA's primary frequency for the Prescott area is 90.1FM. Use 89.5 north of Prescott Heights and in PV. KJZA is not affiliated with NPR.

Wiederaenders: More wasted space

Would someone please point out to Tim that his Friday columns are a whole lot more like Jerry's chatty back-page filler than anything pertinent to an op-ed page?

Like a magpie, he seems drawn to bits of shiny trash, like the annual how-dumb-Americans-are story. I mentioned this the other day, and Tim falls into the same old hackneyed response, picking up the results as if they're entirely new and implying that people are way dumber now than they were in the day.

The thing is, this survey has been done since the late '40s and the results have been more or less consistent. Every experienced newsman knows this -- or should -- because it comes in on the wires every year. It's non-news, and how most editors handle it is anti-news, because it disinforms the reader and passes up the important opportunity for discussion of public policy relative to education that the study was designed to provoke.

Editorial: Freedom for me, not for thee

The unnamed Courier editor commiserates with Councilman Blair on how proper enforcement of fair-housing law will allow icky group homes near respectable people and their precious property values.

It's not really about real-estate value at all, of course. It's about prejudice, class chauvinism, and reality-avoidance. Blair is already and justifiably world-famous for these. Everyone sharing these systems should be encouraged to move into gated HOA conclaves, where they can exercise their pathologies in private under the watchful eyes of tinplate Nazis in golf carts. Kind of a reverse-Soweto approach. Putting them outside the city limits would keep them off our Council and out of our voting mix as well. I'm liking this ....

Gad, editors, grow up, would you? This is infantile.

Failed State

The Boston Review is carrying an excellent think piece by Tom Barry bringing together the various threads contributing to Arizona's sudden pain. It's a great digest for voters who need catching up on the big picture, as well as a crystal-clear example of how businesspeople outside are evaluating Arizona as a prospect, and why marginal tax cuts won't attract sensible industry.

Mission creep

Today we see yet another fail for Tim's "local, local, local" mantra on 8A, a 3/4-page celebrity obit with no local connection. It makes a pretty stark contrast with 10A, wherein a dozen profiles of Prescott Area Leadership award nominees are crammed together with tiny photos. These are supposedly some great role models for our community doing interesting and underpublicized things. Smells like news to me.

Do the Courier editors imagine that Liz Taylor won't get blanket coverage across all media and supermarket tabloid displays? Or did they just have a loose page to fill? If the latter, they can call me, I'll be happy to offer some better ideas. Or ask any bum hanging out on the square, it just isn't hard.

Cantlon: Missing parts keep economy stalled out

Today Tom gets going on a metaphor and it takes him a few stops past where he wanted to get off.

He started out on the right route, outlining some of the systemic weaknesses of laissez-faire capitalism and why public policy is necessary to ensure that it works in service to society rather than the other way around.

I can't endorse Tom's definition of a healthy economy, bristling as it is with unquestioned self-references to the distorted 'norms' we generally accept. His core thesis is good, that we need to find a way back to sensible regulation, but it's buried in waffly verbiage that makes it hard to spot. I think he's fooling himself with the idea that our labor surplus will eventually go away and we'll naturally return to labor shortage. The global economy has done away with that dynamic for good.

Great pension plan, too.

But his automotive metaphor won't run. He writes, "Policies that aim at that healthy economy are the drive shaft of the system. Right now we have an engine that's humming along great, but it's not getting to the wheels. We're not getting the intended end result of moving us forward."

It seems to me, a lowly news editor for an international business paper, that the capitalistic limo is moving along just fine. The problem is that it's left American workers behind. The people driving that sleek machine feel no responsibility to carry anyone but themselves. If you want to ride, their response is "build your own vehicle, sucker." For them, workers aren't partners or passengers -- they're fuel.

Lacking a sense of responsibility to the community that might mitigate their greed, the world's tycoons would happily drive the rest of us into destitution, turn the planet into a dry rock, and call us all ungrateful for complaining. Rather than worship capitalism and pretend that it will take care of us, like some sort of ancient, fickle god, we have to consciously employ capitalist principles in the greater interest of society. Rather than hope in vain that it might give us enough work to live on, we must harness it and make it a tool for the greater good.

It's going in the wrong direction. We need to take the wheel.

Psst, Tom: Just as a temperature can't be hot or cold, a price cannot be cheap or expensive. "Cheap price" is nonsensical. You might like to check in with Eric Partridge. Your editor should have caught that.

Update, Thursday: Tom's a stand-up guy and friend, and puts a challenging question that inspired another tedious rant from me:

Okay, I'll bite. What would you change about the definition of a healthy economy?

For me economic health can be measured on three criteria: robustness, in terms of exchange and added value, sustainability (renewable production and freedom from destabilizing excess fluctuation in value), and freedom from exploitation of people or the environment.

What I infer you were trying to describe are indicators of relative health given the 'system' that Americans generally take for granted. But if we focus on robustness, we forget that this system is both exploitative and unsustainable. Should we really be satisfied with having workers simply cross the threshold from societal burden to subsistence? Is that the criterion for health? What about human
potential and freedom? Talking to a single mom pitching burgers at Mac's about the pursuit of happiness is not unlike spinning her a yarn about winning the lottery and living in a candy palace. Should we be satisfied that a skilled worker must expect to scrimp and labor until he's old so he can be rich enough to buy his freedom from wage slavery (retirement)? This is health?

I'll give you that things aren't working as well now as they did in the postwar boom, but those salad days were based largely on economic distortions left by the war, and they were really only a slight upgrade from the degrading exploitation of the robber-baron days. The depredations of the postmodern baronial acolytes have certainly made things worse again, but rather than hope in vain for a return to the old system and halcyon days, we have to adapt to a quite different
world and a smarter, more humane set of core values. Cosmetic improvements to the old system is nothing more than lipstick on a pig.

Our old empire is creaking into its dissolution precisely because most Americans are clinging to an unsustainable, illusory standard of wealth based on exploitation that is killing our planet. The longer we dick around with this, the worse it'll be for your grandkids. Sayin'.

Editorial: Editor hears all, understands nothing

In today's "United States is not the world's police," the unnamed Courier editor tells us that while he has no heartburn about having our military burn up metric tons of money in a feeble attempt to sort of limit Gaddafi's military strikes on his own people, he's ticked that various people in the government are expressing reservations about it, giving him the impression that US policy is unclear in the matter.

Against those reservations he contrasts the President's statement, "It is U.S. policy that Gadhafi needs to go," and concludes that there is no consensus in our government about this.

The editor forgets -- or never learned -- that the President is also the CinC, and what he says goes in this area. Lower-ranking officials have the right to speak their minds as well, but that's opinion, not policy. Further, the policy that Mr Obama articulated has been standing since Reagan or longer. What's unclear about that? Does he imagine that DefSec Gates will go rogue and undermine the mission because he's not wild about it? That Mike Mullen will "forget" to arm some of the cruise missiles? Gimme a break.

The editor finishes off with, "It's time for the U.S. to back off and allow the United Nations to take the lead," apparently oblivious that this is exactly what the Mr Obama is doing. You see, US policy regarding Gaddafi is not relevant to the UN action in Libya. Two different things.

I guess the editor thought it was a documentary.

This is not difficult to parse out unless you're really hung up on the idea that wherever the US goes, the US must be in charge.

Editorial: Let us make it simple for you

"At times the editorials that appear in this space have received criticism for being too simplistic. We call them logical," says the unnamed Courier editor today, simultaneously expressing cocky smugness and deep insecurity about his ideas in this new world of instant and often relentless online backtalk. It's a pity he won't work harder to base his opinions in defensible reality.

(Note to Ed.: it's not that the commenters hate you, man, it's that you just aren't doing enough homework or thinking these things through.)

He professes a value on logic, then falls into the easiest logical fallacy, the false premise. Build your argument on sand and, no matter how carefully you follow the rules of engineering, it falls apart. This is freshman stuff.

Here it is: "States across this nation are struggling with deficits that are either the result of overspending in good years or revenue shortfalls because of the recession, or both." He states this as fact, but it is unadulterated, fact-free political spin.

State budget deficits themselves are pretty simple: revenues do not rise to meet projections, so you can't afford what you planned to buy. The why is much more complex. In Arizona's case, our Legislatures (and, to a lesser extent, we voters) have made it increasingly difficult to maintain a stable financial base for government services.

This has come about over decades of misrule based on a short-sighted ideology that despises taxes and pays only lip-service to good governance, selling us on simple ideas that sound sensible on the surface but prove to be stupid and counterproductive. Need examples?

The balanced-budget requirement. Requiring that expenditures match revenues in a given fiscal year means that the state cannot rationally undertake any long-term capital project, cannot put money aside in the fat times for use in the thin ones, and cannot borrow to cover unforeseen shortfalls. In other words, it cannot use any of the standard fiscal tools any normal business or household uses to moderate the effects of transient change or invest for the future.

Tax-cut fever. Persons suffering from this highly contagious malady see any surplus government revenue as a refund check for themselves. They make it far easier to reduce taxes than raise them, building in a structural spiral to the bottom. For them, taxes are always too high, no matter how low they fall in real terms.

Competing for industry on tax rates. Our legislators are widely bought into the idea that reducing tax obligations on the new businesses that they happen to like will cause them to flock here and set up shop. There are a dozen things wrong with this notion, but the bottom line is that it's just not true -- ask a manager of a large business about the criteria for locating a new operation, and state tax rates won't be in the top five -- and it doesn't work. It only reduces the state revenue stream, irrevocably.

Scrimping on education. Just as the most important factor for a successful society is smart citizens, the most important factor for successful business is skilled human resources. Our education spending, by far the largest component of the state budget, is essentially direct investment for our current and future prosperity. There's no substitute for good education, and there's no second chance to be seven years old. Our education spending is meager and ineffective by any standard you care to choose. Cutting it further when times are hard is tantamount to me cutting off my leg because I'm feeling hungry.

Resisting the inevitable. Like most people, our legislators are suspicious of the new and like what they're used to. In the wild it's a survival trait, but in a rapidly changing, complex world, it's anti-survival. The inability to see beyond the status quo prevents us from moving with the world rather than against it. This is as true for energy policy as it is for education or immigration policy. Our Legislature is right now doing its best to turn the clock back a hundred years. It will not work.

Warmongering. Armed conflict is expensive, and should never be undertaken lightly, whether it's in a foreign land or along our southern border. We Americans seem to have made a habit of picking pointless fights and wasting obscene amounts of money only to make ever more enemies. This, above all, is something we cannot afford.

Every dollar that our Legislature has collected as revenue or allocated to programs over the years was considered necessary by a majority of lawmakers. Broad-brushing this as "overspending" is thoughtless and unfair, and it undermines our political system. Was it all smart? Of course not, nor have the outcomes always lived up to the theory. But most legislators and governors have believed it to be the best they could do at the time, and most of them have been Republicans. Don't accept the editor's cheap shot at a certain former governor from the other party.

The editor's five-point plan for fiscal solvency lists some eminently sensible ways for an individual to act, but as public policy it's laughable, as idealistic and wrong as any sophomore's libertarian rant. Simple, sure. Useful? Worse than useless. Logical? Hardly.

If we're to have stable prosperity at any point in the future, we have to dig in and do the hard, crappy foundation work. We have to act like adults, invest heavy and long in education and health, and quit spending money and energy on frivolities like racism, gay-bashing, trying to control women's bodies, and flouting our obligations as members of this federal republic. By all means expect high value for your tax dollars,  but don't shortchange a kindergartner's ability to read just so you can have another double mocha latte.

Imperiled by Ignorance

Newsweek is carrying a think piece on the continuing failure of Americans to have much of a clue about what's going on, but it refreshingly goes beyond the how-dumb-we-are headline to fill in why ordinary ignorance is no longer something we can afford to tolerate.

Enumerating how many Americans can't answer simple questions just pisses off those among us who consider 'simplicity' a virtue. More discussion of why it isn't will be fundamental to moving forward on public policy to help build a happier, more competent society.

Added thought: It's vitally important that we somehow make ignorance unfashionable again. 

Editorial: Fawning over rock-star rich guy

The unnamed Courier editor embarrasses himself with today's drooling sycophancy over a stock boilerplate speech by megarich gambler Warren Buffett, battering the reader with a barrage of cliche non-thoughts.

There was a time in this country when we admired people for what the produce. Buffett's clearly not the worst of his ilk, but his riches are won entirely by betting on the production of others. His comments were directed exclusively at others in his non-industry, they're not of any use to those of us who actually work for a living.

Casserly: Prescott's a long way from Big Apple

What a steaming pile of pointless self-indulgence! I am completely mystified as to why this drivel gets space in the paper at all, leave alone on the op-ed page.

Food for Thought

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

-- President Dwight D Eisenhower