Rim Country Gazette

Here we go again - health care e-mail erroneous

2012-02-02T07:26:00.000-08:00

[Gazette Blog Editor's note: It's one thing to oppose our new health care act; it's another to maliciously make up falsehoods about it. We just need to remember that 99% of us have nothing in common with the people who are trying to bring down this plan which is modeled on one GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney got passed when he was governor of Massachusetts.]

Affordable Care Act Saves Money for Retirees

It has come to our attention that a phony email has been circulating that claims the Affordable Care Act (the health care reform law enacted in 2010) adds higher premium amounts to Medicare Part B.

THIS IS FALSE. Actually, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will save you money over time. Because the new law strengthens Medicare and works to drive down health care costs, Part B premiums are likely to grow more slowly than they would have without the ACA.

And don’t forget that the ACA did NOT cut any Medicare benefits. In fact, the new law added some excellent NEW benefits, such as: free cancer screenings and other preventive services (no co-pays); an annual free checkup with your doctor (no co-pays); and the gradual closing of the prescription-drug “doughnut hole” (Part D’s big gap in coverage). All of these benefit improvements are NOW in effect.

2012-02-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

1st Annual

WINE ROUNDUP

Wine, Chocolate, Food, and Fun

February 24 & 25

At the Fabulous Cherry Creek Lodge

Full Package Includes Dinner & Friday Night Accommodations

3 Full Meals & Saturday Night Accommodations

Wine & Chocolate - Pleasant Valley Winery

Sunday Morning Breakfast

Friday Evening Dinner

Dinner, Wine, Chocolate Dessert Buffet, Pairing, & Fun

Saturday Afternoon Wine Tasting & Fun Sessions

Bottles & Glasses

Wine Etiquette & Pairing

Wine Trivia

Wine Making Equipment

Saturday Evening 4-Course Dinner & Dessert

Paired with Wine by Pleasant Valley Winery

Sunday Morning Breakfast

Wine Lover Special Rates: pete@cherrycreeklodge.com, 928 462-4029

Weekend $198 per Person or, $389 per Couple. Lodging, Meals, Snacks & Events

Saturday Only $42.50 per Person, or $80 per Couple

Please Join Us For This Special Fun Wine Lover Event

Prescribed burn underway off Houston Mesa Rd.

2012-02-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

Payson, Ariz. (January 30, 2012) – Payson Ranger District fire specialists plan to conduct a 300 acre broadcast fire treatment east of the Houston Mesa Horse Trail extending to the Mesa del Caballo area Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 1-2.

Residents and visitors to the area can expect to see and smell moderate amounts of smoke each day of the prescribed fire operation. Mesa del Caballo will be impacted by smoke during the day. Diurnal air flow in the evening will move residual smoke into the E. Tyler Pkwy. area, Chaparral Pines, Rim golf Club, and the Payson area.

To mitigate the impact of smoke, ignitions will end each day by 3:30 p.m. Smoke may linger in these areas thru Friday. During fire operations, signs will be posted along roads that are likely to be affected by smoke. Motorists are urged to use caution while driving thru these areas and to slow down for the safety of firefighters and the public.

Broadcast fire treatments can continue for several days or weeks and generally are conducted during cooler weather after grasses have dried and cured. Moderate winds are needed to carry flames across open areas and achieve the beneficial effects desired by land managers.

Prescribed fire treatments are always dependent on optimal weather conditions before ignitions begin, such as fuel moisture content, temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, and other variables.

For information about prescribed fire and mechanical fuels reduction operations, please call the Payson Ranger District at 928-474-7900. Residents can also stay updated on forest prescribed fires at www.fs.usda.gov/tonto. To report a wildland fire, the fire emergency number is 480-457-1555, or 866-746-6516.

Love, AZ history on sale at Library Bookstore

2012-02-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

In recognition of Arizona’s Centennial Celebration the Library Friends of Payson Bookstore and Internet Sales team are offering a selection of specially priced, collectible books and pamphlets highlighting Arizona and Arizona history. These items will range in price from $1.00 to $20.00 and will only be available during February. This is a not to be missed opportunity for collectors and Arizona history buffs.

In February our thoughts turn to romance. In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Bookstore is featuring paperback romance novels at the incredibly low price of 15 for $1.00. These will be drawn from a recently received, very large donation of paperback romances that are in like new condition. Hurry in for the best selection.

Bookstore stock has never been better and new items are added daily. Therefore, the wise patron stops by often. Bookstore volunteers are always happy to help you. Every penny spent in the Bookstore goes directly to the Payson Library for purchase of new materials.

The LFOP Bookstore is located to the right of the circulation desk just inside the Payson Public Library, 328 N. McLane Road. For more information visit the Library Friends of Payson website at www.libraryfriendsofpayson.org

2012-02-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

the Reunion Jazz Band

performs

2 - 4 pm, Sunday Feb. 12

Community Presbyterian Church

800 West Main Street

Mainstream jazz and some BeBop played the way you remember.

Music from the glory years of jazz, performed by experienced musicians.

Ken Hales - trumpet & flugelhorn

Clark Furlong - trombone

Chuck Bellman - saxophone & flute

Tom Walker - piano

Randy Wright - bass

Gerry Reynolds - drums

Some years ago I played drums with the Chandler-Gilbert College night jazz band, a seventeen-piece ensemble that still plays regularly in the Valley. A number of members, including those in the Reunion Jazz Band, have continued with theband, as well as branching out to perform with other groups. Recently six of uscame together (a reunion for me) to perform for a band member's wedding(see the above photo). The reunion was magical, as was the wedding,so I just had to bring the guys together again in Payson.

$5 donation at the door includes refreshments.

Please let me know if you plan to attend with an individual message sent to: gerry-reynolds@hotmail.com.

Photo provided courtesy of Tom Walker.

Little girl grows canned corn - in the winter

2012-01-31T10:49:00.000-08:00

LIFE'S OUTTAKES

By Daris Howard

Gazette Contributor

It was just after Christmas and the temperature was below zero outside, the snow covered the ground two feet deep, and my little four-year old daughter, Heather, was putting on her coat to venture outdoors.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I am going out to pick strawberries,” she informed me.

I told her there wouldn’t be any strawberries this time of year. “Have you been out to check?” she asked, skeptical of my knowledge on such matters.

“Well, no,” I had to admit. “Not recently.”

“Then,” she said triumphantly, “maybe there are and you just don’t know.”

There was no talking her out of it, so I put on my own coat and we trudged out, mitten in hand, to check. I thought for sure, once we got to the strawberry patch and she saw the snow piled high across it, that she would realize I was right. But she was undaunted as she was sure they were growing strawberries underneath the snow. Nothing was going to convince her otherwise except seeing for herself, so I retrieved a shovel and started to dig. We dug down to the plants, brown in their dormant state, and still she remained unconvinced. She was sure we had just dug in the wrong place.

I think we had to uncover about half of the patch before she considered I might be right, but only maybe; she still thought I might be digging in the wrong spots. By the time we finished, our neighbors were staring out their windows at us, wondering about such things as sugar sap, and pine sap, and especially about a sappy neighbor that would drag his daughter out to dig holes in the garden in the middle of winter.

I thought we were done and she would be ready to head back into the warm house, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet. She stuck her hand into her coat pocket and when she pulled it out she had corn in her little mitten. It wasn’t seed corn, but canned corn she had saved from dinner. She wanted to plant it. By this time my heart ached for my daughter that loved to garden. She was so much like me and the winter seemed so long to her.

I tried to explain to her that cooked corn wouldn’t grow anywhere, let alone out in this cold. I could see tears glisten the corners of her eyes. My mind whirred as to how I could get out of this without hurting my little daughter’s feelings. She so badly wanted to plant her corn right away. Suddenly, I had an idea. I told her I had a big pot and we would fill it with dirt and put it in a south window. Together we rummaged through the garden shed until we found the biggest planting pot we had. I dug the snow away in the garden and chiseled some frozen dirt out of it.

We set the pot in a south window and she impatiently checked it off and on all day to see when the dirt would be warm enough to plant. I tried to explain again that cooked corn would not grow, but she insisted otherwise, so we planted her corn. After I tucked her in bed, I found some leftover garden seed from the previous year, and planted it in her pot. She checked it every day and when the time finally arrived that the little shoots sprang from the soil, she was dragging me over to see.

A short time later, in early February, snow still thick on the ground, I found her again pulling on her coat and mittens. When I asked her where she was going she said she was going to check the strawberries again.

“I thought I explained that strawberries won’t grow in the winter.”

“Yes,” she answered, “but you also said cooked corn wouldn’t grow and look at my plants.” I looked at her plants, now about 6 inches high, and shook my head as I slipped off to put my coat on.

(Daris Howard, award-winning, syndicated columnist and playwright, is author of “Super Cowboy Rides” and can be contacted at daris@darishoward.com; or visit his website at http://www.darishoward.com)

Candlelight vigil, memorial for accident victim

2012-01-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

Saige Bloom Update:

A candlelight vigil has been planned for Monday night, January 30, 2012, beginning at 6:00 p.m. Attendees will gather at the Walmart intersection.

Saige's memorial service will be held this Saturday, February 4th beginning at 2:00 p.m. at Mountain Bible Church, Building A, Worship Center. There will be a light luncheon in the Ramada following the service. All are welcome and invited.

High on the Mainstream Embankment

2012-01-30T09:26:00.000-08:00

"If loss of your moral compass is a necessary qualification for luxuriating in the surging current of the Mainstream, more than a few of us will be happy to view the entire proceedings lounging high on the embankment."

By Will Durst

San Francisco Chronicle

readersupportednews.org

29 January 12 - As rare and mythical as the unicorn, it too cavorts amongst the clouds with double rainbows birthing from its unfathomable depths. But instead of worshipful 12 year-old girls, it is conservative politicians who tack drawings of this inamorata on walls above their beds. We're talking about the legendary… Mainstream.

The message is relatively straightforward. Inside the Mainstream, you will rub elbows with everything that is good and right and true and just about America. Families have 2.4 children, none of whom sport barbed wire piercings or dragon neck tattoos or ever talk smack back. Lawns are broad and green and crabgrass free. And children are cheerfully shuttled to school in orderly processions of grey and beige Minivans. The place to be.

Outside the Mainstream, red turbo hybrids prowl discordantly with hip hop infused rock and roll blasting from after market Korean stereo systems. Uncomfortable shoe choices are flaunted by pregnant teenage girls, while Steve Jobs' subversive acolytes encourage impressionable minds to "think differently," actively disrupting the carefully nurtured herd mentality. The place to flee.

Dedication to Mainstream purity extends to within the holy liquid circle as well. Newton Leroy Gingrich castigated Ron Paul for being "totally outside the Mainstream of every decent American." And Ron Paul is a medical doctor. Apparently the Coast Guard patrolling the Mainstream is ever vigilant.

Then Willard Mitt Romney went and said pretty much exactly the same thing about Newt, which must mean he considers poor Dr. Paul dying of thirst two counties away in some desert of his own moistureless making. And President Obama? Forget about it. He can't even see the hint of a whisper of a shadow of dampness due to the curvature of the earth.

The obvious intention of Team Romney is to plant Mitt in the soft squishy loam as the sole candidate an ordinary person could expect to meet up with in the middle of the flood plains of normalcy. Preserving the Mainstream as a very exclusive territory. A restricted tributary complete with velvet rope and a couple of hulking bouncers protecting it from the dinghies of the hoi polloi. Sort of a watery gated community. Behind which the Governor seems plenty comfortable.

Only proper God-fearing decent Americans are allowed to soak in the aqueous chestnut that is the Mainstream. The rest of us boundary crossing reprobates are prohibited from enjoying the divine waters and directed to spend summer afternoons splashing each other in shallow muddy puddles.

Of course, even to those who can afford the initiation fee, recent responses from Republican debate audiences indicate that voyaging down the Mainstream is a very expensive way to travel. Exacting heavy- duty psychic dues.

First, crowds booed a gay soldier, then cheered the death of an unfortunate who couldn't afford health insurance, and finally leapt to their feet to applaud one of the grandstanding creekside tide surfers who ridiculed food stamp recipients.

If loss of your moral compass is a necessary qualification for luxuriating in the surging current of the Mainstream, more than a few of us will be happy to view the entire proceedings lounging high on the embankment. Besides, we have better picnic spreads.

And for those who do decide to soak in the narrow- minded current, you might want to invest in a heated wetsuit because that menacing red tide torrent of the Mainstream looks to be mighty cold.

The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out the website: Redroom.com to buy his book or find out more about upcoming stand-up performances. Or willdurst.com. Or don't.

2012-01-30T08:07:00.000-08:00

RIM COUNTRY POETRY

A statue in Bonaventure Cemetary in Savannah, Ga.

became famous as a result of a book and movie:

"In the Garden of Good and Evil."

It was later moved to a museum in a neighbor county.

The Bird Girl of Savannah

By Noble Collins

“Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time”

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

For years, among the ancient oaks,
you danced your chaste ballet

to silent music -
your lithe Glissade unseen
beyond the reach of Bonaventure.

With each demure Plie,
gray ringlet curtains of old moss

made way
in glad anticipation of your entrance on the stage.

A place of long forgotten life briefly heartened,
stirred for a moment

thrilled to Terpsichore
as your unfettered dance

breathed sweet warm youth to old earth.

A gentle curtsy, then, you made
to faint applause of Live Oak leaves,
as Tybee’s breezes rustled through the wood.

But on a day when you were resting,
hushing secret longings from dark vaults,
they captured you and gave you to the crowd -

bound those dainty feet,
and placed you on the cover of a book,

an icon for a sordid tale.

Soon, came leering groups

to gawk and whisper, trespass sacred grounds,

so you were moved,

no longer Chatham’s ward but Telfair’s,

behind museum walls

And here, in cold beauty,

resigned,

obliging,

poised in First Position

you wait for new music.

(Send your original poetry to peoplesgazette@gmail.com)

Buffet Rule would raise $50 billion from .08%

2012-01-29T13:28:00.000-08:00

By Pat Garofalo

THINKPROGRESS

nationofchange.org

When President Obama announced his latest vision for the so called “Buffett rule” — a 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires — during his State of the Union address this week, Republicans were quick to criticize it. For instance, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) derided the proposal as a “political gimmick.” “It’s a smokescreen,” added Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).

However, as a new analysis from Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out, the Buffett rule as laid out in the speech could raise up to $50 billion per year to pay down the deficit, while affecting just 0.08 percent of taxpayers:

"Citizens for Tax Justice has calculated that President Obama’s 'Buffett Rule' would, if in effect this year, raise $50 billion in a single year and affect only the richest 0.08 percent of taxpayers — that’s just eight percent of the richest one percent of taxpayers. [...]

"To calculate the $50 billion figure, we assumed that there would be a minimum tax that applies to adjusted gross income (AGI) minus charitable deductions. (We’ll call this modified AGI.)

"We assumed that a taxpayer with modified AGI greater than $1 million would face a minimum tax of 30 percent of modified AGI. The taxpayer would pay whichever is greater, their personal income tax under the existing rules or this minimum tax."

Obviously, $50 billion by itself won’t balance the budget, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. At the same time, the Buffett rule will aid in correcting some of the problems in the tax code — like one quarter of millionaires paying lower rates than millions of middle class families and some millionaires paying no income tax at all — that have helped drive income inequality up to a level not seen in the U.S. since the 1920s.

Trying to go somewhere, I ended up nowhere

2012-01-29T10:12:00.000-08:00

OUT TO PASTOR

By Rev. James L. Snyder

Gazette Contributor

It was one of those weeks where, if I accomplished anything, that delicious slice of information has completely eluded the tiny gray cells floating in my cranium. It is not as if those little gray cells had anything else to do.

As I suffused my weary body into my La-Z-Boy chair, I knew I was tired but I could not figure out what I had done during the week to make me this tired. After all, it did not seem like I had accomplished anything of significance this week. I was trying to do something, of course, but I had absolutely nothing to show for it. What was I trying to do this past week?

A verse of Scripture began haunting me as I thought about this. "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (James 4:17). What was I supposed to "doeth" that I did not get around to "doething”?

Of course, there was that funeral I had this past week. Unfortunately, I opened my book to the wrong page and begin the funeral by saying, "Dearly beloved we are gathered together here to unite these two in holy matrimony."

Holy macaroni!

What a difference the wrong page makes. At least I was not officiating at a wedding and said, "Ashes to ashes, and dirt to dirt." Although, to be honest about it, I have had some weddings where I thought that phrase fit.

I was tempted, only for a moment, to query the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, but I feared she would tell me. There is something to say about mystery. Nothing is more mysterious than the feminine side of the marriage equation. Odd isn't it, that the marriage equation is not always even.

As I reflected upon my week past, I duly noted the activities that occupied most of my week. Apart from the funeral, I had several hospital visits to make. As is usually the case, people conspire to go to the hospital at the same time but never at the same hospital. One even went out of town to go to a hospital.

Other visits were made and other activities attended. Certain deadlines were staring me in the face and I stared right back at them defiantly. I am not sure who won.

Services and Bible studies needed to be prepared, which can take up a lot of time. Then, don't you know it; my truck is always out of gas when I am in a hurry. I suppose I could fill my tank up when it got down to a certain level, but where would the fun be in that? Nothing compares to the adrenaline of being in a hurry and late for an appointment and then running out of gas.

Do not get me wrong here. It is not that I do not enjoy giving my wife a call on the cell phone when stranded along the side of the road. It is the highlight of the stranded experience. Usually, her response to my phone call is what stresses me out.

"What," she declares in that sarcastic tone of hers, "have you run out of gas again?"

It is her theatrical use of the word "again" that I believe could easily earn her an Oscar. I once presented her with an Oscar Meyer wiener, but she did not enjoy the joke. Personally, I thought it was a great joke and I really did not appreciate her reaction. Needless to say, I have not repeated that sin, although temptation is what it is.

I suppose I did do things and accomplished something this past week, but it really does not explain why I am as tired as I am tonight. I can remember there was a time that I did not even know the meaning of tired. I got tired all right; I just did not know the meaning of the word tired.

Then the whole thing dawned on me. It was almost like being hit on the head with an iron skillet by you know whom. The lights flashed. The lightbulb went on. I had an epiphany to end all epiphanies.

At this point, I am surprised my wife did not get the jump on me with this one. The reason I am so tired is because I am old. There, I said it. I have come to that point in life where being young is a fond fading memory.

As this bit of information began marinating in my cranium, it had a very comforting effect. Up to this point, I had been worrying about the fact that I was tired and I could not link that condition with any specific activity. As is usually the case, there are good sound reasons for everything. I began to look at my tired condition in a completely different light.

I have earned my being tired. It is something I have worked for all my life. Now, here it is. I am now collecting those wonderful dividends from all that activity of the past.

As I thought about this, a marvelous verse of Scripture came to my mind. "The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head" (Proverbs 20:29 KJV).

Being tired is the crown of a lifetime of activity.

The Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, FL 34483. He lives with his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him at 352-687-4240 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.net. The church web site is www.whatafellowship.com.

If we only knew what we wanted...

2012-01-28T11:28:00.000-08:00

COMMENTARY:
GEORGE TEMPLETON

By George Templeton

Gazette Columnist

Metaphor

I was in Pune, India, working on a technical problem involving auto-rickshaws. My Hindustan taxi-cab left in the night. There were no lights of any sort, including signs, street lights, and home lights because all the electric power was allocated to industry. Holy cows and people wandered everywhere in the town’s dirt streets without accident. As my taxi proceeded out of town, the dust poured up forming a blanketing fog-like haze obscuring vision. We approached a large truck that was decorated like a surrey with a fringe on the top. It had a sign on the back proclaiming, “Horn please”. My driver hit the horn and suddenly pulled onto the other side of the road to pass, accelerating as fast as he could. From my window I could see the tires of the truck, as high as the roof of the taxi, and headlights of cars coming head-on from the opposite direction. I said a silent prayer as we rocketed by and I began to appreciate more deeply John’s description of Jesus as the light of the world. It must have been like this in the time of Christ after dark. I don’t think John was talking about the local torch vendor when he used this description. The power of the metaphor is that it is a truth universally, deeply, and instantly recognized by everyone and that it talks to each individual in the most important and uniquely personal way.

Affective Domain

I spent my life in an occupation that was not intuitive or visible. No one sees electrons or the Fermi level. An amazing and fascinating reality that could make predictions was ever present. Measurable objectives and results are king in business and education, but I have come to think that the most important things in life are not measurable or quantifiable.

Seven

Ron Paul said that you can’t legislate morality. Creative finance, internet gambling, and Darwinian capitalism are proof. We owe to Catholic consciousness the touchy-feely concept of the seven deadly sins. They did not come from lawyers. It is easy to change the minds of men, but difficult to change their hearts. We have all passed a school course, but that does not mean that we have internalized it, and can generalize and apply it in a variety of circumstances. When it was pointed out that a commercial sponsored by the Republican National Committee misrepresented the facts, an official declared: “Since when is a commercial supposed to be accurate?” Let the buyer beware is the American ethos. Manipulation, misrepresentation, and deception are accepted in business and politics and they thwart attempts to get the truth.

Family Values

John Wesley, a founder of the eighteenth century evangelical movement, maintained that all economic problems are primarily ethical and therefore religious. He believed that we should gain, save, and give abundantly. However, it is often forgotten that he also maintained that one should not harm their neighbor, or sell anything that impairs health.

Ad Hominem

A bumper sticker attacks the person rather than the policy claiming: “We hate everyone who isn’t us”. Romney commented that social support programs replace ambition with envy not realizing that he already has that problem. How many people have an undue concern about his taxes and would not support him simply because he is rich?

More Freedom

The Republicans claim they will give you more freedom. They would eliminate the consumer protection agency to help those friendly loan stores, already more common than taverns on a Milwaukee street intersection. Preventing fraud, identity theft, and educating the public on financial literacy threatens them. They would usurp the EPA under the guise of facilitating energy development, manufacturing, and employment. H. R. 2401 adds a dozen bureaucrats to make certain that environmental regulations do not encumber coal-fired power plants who would like to continue their emission of toxic mercury. You can be free of OSHA and safety regulations, free to breathe toxic air, drink poisoned water, free of food nutrition labels, free of the minimum wage and government support to health care and retirement. You won’t have to press one for English or worry about discrimination and fluorescent light bulbs and your children can consume nicotine candy and catch infectious diseases from unvaccinated classmates. You will be free from government but not from private power. You won’t be free of responsibility for consequences.

When Governor Perry spoke of Romney’s Bain Capital business as “vulture” capital instead of venture capital it showed that serious moral clarity contemplates shades of ethical behavior. Hillary Clinton claimed, “The market knows the price of everything but the value of nothing”. The problem is, free enterprise is not free, at least when the mortgage investment business is involved.

Thirty years of deregulation, tax cuts, and easy credit, brought on the Bush bail-outs, stimulus, and recession. The colossal fire spread around the world and it is still burning in spite of everyone’s efforts. We can’t believe Newt Gingrich’s assertion that President Obama “put” people onto food stamps. The unfortunate requested help. They could only hang on so long and should not feel ashamed about that. In the meantime, we are wasting immense amounts of money on political gossip ads.

Republicans blame the problem they caused on President Obama and claim that even more deregulation will restore the economy. For many retirees, the crash destroyed the equivalent of saving five years of their entire peak income assuming that they invested all of their earnings and used none of it to live on. The statistical models that optimize profit and encourage gambling are still in use. There is a new addition to the mix and it isn’t getting any better. It is the computing cloud. Some claim that with enough data the future can be predicted. But sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. The data gets in the way. Wall-Street executives claim that they were doing God’s work and that creative financial transactions had to be hidden. Like casino gambling, it is an illusion that the little man can win in the long run. If you are fifty years old or more you should be concerned about how stimulating the economy by deregulation might impact your retirement.

Fundamentals

Constitutional fundamentalism centers on a revision of history, the ability to “channel” the ghosts of our Founding Fathers, the portrayal of the constitution as an anti-government manifesto, the belief that nothing has changed since 1781, and the desire to undo 100 years of interpretation by the courts. Federal government is “evil” but state government is “constitutional”. Consequently we must privatize schools, ignore Supreme Court decisions, call justices before congress to justify their decisions, and make roads, forests, and disaster relief up to the states. It has become a destructive Tea-Party cultural war, not politics, and not caused by President Obama.

Jimmy Carter’s book Our Endangered Values describes a religious fundamentalism that Liberals identify with. Whether some of us have doubts about the talking snake in Genesis misses the important point of the story. However, when congress picks pseudo-scientists and quacks to represent their politics and mislead the public we all are hurt. It is not a matter of unbelief, but rather whether our children will turn from science, thinking that it is an immoral heathen darkness put upon them by elite intellectuals.

Scientific Religion

Religion is about why things are. Science is about how reality works. They are not in conflict. There is a difference between belief and facts. The role of science in society is to provide the facts, the church to provide values, and policy makers to make the decisions. They must be kept free and separate. When the Ethics and Public Policy Center claims in its mission statement that “science must be thoughtful about the problems it provokes”, it fails to make this distinction. They would write you a ticket because you were going to speed. They would shoot the messenger because they did not like the message.

Political agenda can wear religious clothing. There is a danger when science becomes politics, beliefs become facts, and spirituality becomes apostate. There is a danger when religion becomes a sanctimonious face for policies that favor the rich and powerful. Religion and ideology combined can create its own reality. Power and ideology can mold the nature of truth itself.

Empathy

We can’t stand to see pain. It’s the Republican refrain. So, darlings, please don’t get hurt, because we will have to leave you lying there in the dirt! When welfare has no personal face and becomes just individual responsibility we can be proud, disrespectful, and demeaning. We think we don’t use it. But we don’t see the hidden government subsidies that benefit us. We think that we earned Medicare and are entitled to it forgetting that many receive more than they contributed.

Christians for a Sustainable Economy argues that the poor need to be protected from unwise, uncompassionate, and unjust federal welfare programs that demean them, destroy their families, trap them in poverty, dependency, and despair for generations. So, food stamps, school meals, head start, Medicaid, and children’s health insurance can now be seen as a conspiracy to oppress the poor!

Conclusion

The values of kindness, cooperation, humility, respect, competition, and meaningful personal contribution guide us to where we want to go, a less desperate, more hopeful world, if we only knew what we wanted.

Low IQ, conservative beliefs linked to prejudice

2012-01-28T11:17:00.000-08:00

OCCUPY DUMB STREET: Klansmen display their affinity for the days of the Confederacy, February, 19, 2010. (photo: Ian Butterbaugh/Media Matters)

By Stephanie Pappas

LiveScience.com

readersupportednews.org

28 January 12 - There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

Controversy Ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals than those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]

"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."

Brains and Bias

Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]

In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.

"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

A Study of Averages

Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.

"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.

Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.

"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."

Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.

"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."

In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

Simple Viewpoints

Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.

The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.

"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."

Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.

"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.

Ban on texting while driving advances

2012-01-27T08:58:00.000-08:00

By SARA SMITH

Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – Responding to arguments that outlawing texting while driving would create a “nanny state” and burden law enforcement, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee said Thursday that government has a duty to protect citizens.

“This is a place where government should be regulating and should be concerned,” said Rep. Vic Williams, R–Tucson. “The numbers don’t lie. Statistically we have problems with people driving distracted.”

The committee voted 6–2 to endorse HB 2512, authored by Rep. Steve Urie, R–Gilbert, which carries a fine of $50 for those caught texting while driving and $200 if a texting driver is involved in an accident.

Thirty–five states have laws against texting while driving. Phoenix approved a ban in 2007, and the Tucson City Council is considering a similar measure.

Urie told the committee that a law would prevent a patchwork of ordinances around the state.

“The state needs to get out in front of that and set the precedent,” he said.

The bill, which applies to handheld wireless communication devices, includes exceptions for emergency vehicle drivers and law enforcement officers using “necessary equipment,” drivers reading or selecting telephone numbers and those whose vehicles aren’t moving.

Stuart Goodman, a lobbyist for AAA Arizona, said text messaging increases the risk of being in a crash or near–crash by 23.2 times, citing a 2009 study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

“Texting while driving is such an egregious distraction compared to the others that exist,” Goodman said.

Rep. Jerry Weiers, R–Glendale, who voted against the bill, said it would be difficult for law enforcement officers to determine who is texting versus someone simply looking at the phone or a GPS application.

“I think a lot of policemen would tell you that it’s unenforceable,” he said.

Rep. Karen Fann, R–Prescott, who also opposed the measure, said there are other distractions as bad or worse than texting.

“Rather than just do texting, I would like to see us have a good law that addresses all distracted driving,” she said.

Rep. Steve Farley, D–Tucson, who has authored similar bills in previous sessions, said the tragic results of accidents caused by texting outweigh potential gray areas.

“The types of things you do when you’re texting are horrific, whether you’re running into the sides of moving trains, which has happened, or crossing over a center line and hitting a mom head-on, leaving her kids without a mom, which happened in this state in July 2007,” Farley said.

Other driving-related bills:

SB 1056

• Author: Sen. John McComish, R-Ahwatukee

• Key provision: Would ban those with learner’s permits and minors who have had their licenses for six months or less from using cellphones for any purpose while driving.

• Status: Approved 23-6 Thursday by the state Senate and forwarded to the House.

HB 2312

• Author: Rep. Steve Farley, D-Tucson

• Key provision: Would prohibit driving while distracted in any manner.

• Status: Assigned to the House Transportation Committee.

Jan Brewer, classless nitwit

2012-01-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

(Gazette Blog editor's note: We tried to stay out of this one. Really. We have friends who are Republicans. But then the following by Charles Pierce came along, with dozens of comments from readers across the country. Only the first few are reprinted here. Folks, this woman is killing us. If you disagree, send us your comments - if you dare. We'll post each one along with another comment from Pierce's readers. Should be fun. And no, we will not dignify what Brewer did by running the wagging finger photo here.)

By Charles P. Pierce

Esquire Magazine

readersupportednews.org

26 January 12 - Let it now be said that, when it comes to expressing disapproval of the incumbent president of the United States, Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas did it with much more class - and, dare I say it, respect - than did Jan Brewer, the half-cracked yahoo governor of Arizona.

Thomas just declined to show up for a photo-op. Brewer, last seen drifting off into the Phantom Zone at the beginning of a debate - and try to ignore her being called a "gladiator" by Diane Sawyer, a/k/a Nixon's Last Sucker - decided to create a photo-op of her own by jabbing (and jabbering) at the president as he arrived in Phoenix late Wednesday.

The president engaged her for a while and then politely walked on, as we all try to do when confronted by crazy people at places like airports and bus terminals.

The wingnut-o-sphere is, of course, well over the freaking moon at all of this. And here's Mr. Murdoch's startlingly advertising-free little political fanzine, adding some background by believing everything written by Bobby Jindal.

Maybe the president's wrong for confronting people who write what he believes are lies about him. ("Punching down," Howard Fineman called it last night, although at whom a president could "punch up" remains a mystery.) What I do know is that the Bruins should trade Tim Thomas to the Phoenix Coyotes immediately, so he can run for governor and give that great state the dignity it now lacks.

Comments

+204 # Barbara K 2012-01-26 10:24

This snarly-mouth nitwit is such an idiot and lacks respect for anyone. Not only that, she is a crooked liar. Just see how she is involved in the Prisons for Profit in Arizona. I hope smart Arizonans get rid of her before she destroys the state completely, I know several people who will not visit Arizona. No, they are not Mexicans and neither am I.

NEVER VOTE REPUBLICAN !!

our future is at stake

+92 # LessSaid 2012-01-26 11:45

I don't (think) there are enough smart Arizonans to get rid of Brewer. I was blown away that they voted to keep her over just the immigration thing. This woman is crazy and stupid and the voters kept her. They most likely would vote for her just because (of) how she spoke to the President. Stupid people are in office due to stupid voters voting them in office.

+49 # bugbuster 2012-01-26 12:05

I think it's the desert heat. I remember when Arizona was all googly-eyed about Barry Goldwater, the first real wingnut in my memory, and not nearly as wingnutty as what we have now.

+40 # Muffy787 2012-01-26 12:48

I think there finally are a good group of Democrats who have had it with her and the rest of the crooks. We are working hard to get some elected this year.

We have a wonderful, young Democratic Chairman who is dynamic and has a fabulous resume. I have high hopes for him to run for House or Senate and WIN. GOD willing, I hope.

+29 # photonracer 2012-01-26 17:21

Dear Less You are quite right. Being a native Arizonan I recognize what I am dealing with is an artificial transient population of Republicans who just happen to be residing here at election time. We locals are supposed to be benefiting from their largesse of purchases, property taxes and increased employment. That ain't happening! The old barfly with the shaky finger keeps giving away the farm while imprisoning the darker skinned workforce. In return she getting campaign support and money from the private prison industry. Arizona is a classic Republican SNAFU. Don't even get me started on that nitwit sheriff.

+14 # Todd Williams 2012-01-26 13:34

True. I would drive around Arizona if it were in my direct route to California. This woman is off her rocker and a crook, to boot. How dare she wag her finger at the President. Obama should have grabbed the digit and broken it in half!

Bill would give incentive for marriage course

2012-01-26T09:09:00.000-08:00

(Gazette Blog Editor's note: Finally, a good idea from one of our state legislators, and a Republican no less. We must note, however, that she is a woman and she represents Tucson, our right wing state's liberal bastion. Thank you, Rep. Proud. Now let's see if the Republican-dominated legislature will make it law or if they're too busy allowing guns in classrooms to bother with it.)

By CONNOR RADNOVICH

Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – To motivate couples to learn more about marital issues before tying the knot, a Tucson lawmaker is sponsoring a bill that would cut the price of marriage licenses in half if couples take a premarital course covering subjects including conflict management to parenting responsibilities.

Republican Rep. Terri Proud, who is divorced herself, said these classes help keep marriages together and that HB 2217 would give couples a financial reason to take a course.

“There is nothing out there (as) incentive for couples to find out how marriage works before jumping in,” Proud said. “I do wish something like this had been around a few years ago.”

Proud’s bill would require counties to provide a 50 percent discount on marriage licenses for taking a premarital course. A marriage license costs $72 in Maricopa County, for example.

To qualify for the discount, the course have to include instruction on conflict management, communication skills, finances and parenting.

Proud didn’t take a course like the one she is suggesting before she married. But several years ago she took a class through her church to see how they work and came away impressed.

“I wish I would have taken these courses before getting married,” Proud said. “Hopefully it’ll get them to think and develop tools that will help them throughout the years.”

According to a 2009 U.S. Census Bureau report, nearly 11 out of 1,000 men and 12 out of 1,000 women in Arizona reported getting divorced in the previous year. That was slightly higher than the national average.

At least six states have enacted similar laws. In Florida, couples who take a course of at least four hours can have $32.50 taken off the cost of a marriage license. Minnesota provides an $75 discount on licenses for completing a 12-hour premarital course.

Proud’s bill doesn’t specify a length for the course, just that a member of the clergy or marriage counselor certify that the couple sat through a program.

“It’s a great idea, but it’s really hard to get these bills passed,” said Diane Sollee, founder and director of smartmarriages.com, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition dedicated to marriage, family and couples education.

A major reason these bills are difficult to pass, Sollee said, is because counties don’t want to lose any of the revenue they get from licenses, especially during tough economic times.

But, she said, these courses help couples understand the problems they will face in marriage and prepare for the challenges.

Calls to the Arizona Association of Counties seeking comment on the bill weren’t returned by Tuesday evening.

About HB 2217

• Author: Rep. Terri Proud, R-Tucson

• Provision: Would cut cost of marriage license in half if couples take a premarital course.

• Course requirements: In order to qualify for the deal, the course couples take would have to cover conflict management, communication skills, finances and parenting.

• Precedent: Several states have similar laws, including Florida, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Texas.

• Status: Currently not assigned to committee.

Bill could clear lunch plates at AZ schools

2012-01-26T08:27:00.000-08:00

Creative Commons photo by Karen Blumberg

By Kellie Mejdrich

Arizona-Sonora News Service

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 20:48 - Could 50,000 Arizona schoolchildren be going without lunch? That’s the fear some people are expressing if the state legislature passes and the governor signs a bill under consideration.

SB 1061, sponsored by Sen. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa, waives a mandate that kindergarten through eighth grade public school districts participate in the National School Lunch Program, a federal program that provides free and reduced-price lunches to children through cash subsidies.

While many Republican legislators laud the bill, saying it promotes “local control,” the bill baffles nutritionists and educators who say it attacks a federal program that provided Arizona more than $340 million in cash for lunches last year.

The program, called the “Healthy Hunger Kids Act,” was unveiled in detail Wednesday by First Lady Michelle Obama, detailing the increases of fruit, whole grain, and cut in sodium and trans fat—a $3.2 billion program to be implemented over the next five years.

School officials like Nutrition Director Karen Johnson of Yuma Elementary School District, is baffled as to why this bill is even necessary, calling the National School Lunch Program “a federal program that works.”

“He’s trying to plug a leak in a dam that’s not leaking. There’s no leak here,” Johnson said. Johnson fears this bill could leave some kids, even a small number, with no way to pay for or receive a lunch.

“To me, if one school drops off the program, and if there’s one child that’s going to go hungry that day, we’ve done an injustice to that student,” Johnson said. “I know people don’t think that will happen, but it could happen. And to me, “could” is something that I have to pay attention to.”

Stacey Morley, director of policy development and government relations with the Arizona Department of Education, believes public outrage would likely keep food on the plates of Arizona’s poorest.

“What school board is going to vote not to feed kids? Imagine that headline.” Morley said.

She imagines the situation Crandall is envisioning is one where a school with a low percentage of children eligible for free and reduced children finds the program too expensive. But even then, they’d have to provide the meals themselves, she said.

But there’s no guarantee in the bill that this happens.

Crandall refused to provide language in the bill guaranteeing children receive a free or reduced lunch absent the federal program, something Jennifer Loredo, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Education Association, requested.

“I won’t replace one mandate with another,” Crandall said.

Crandall doesn’t believe his bill will leave kids hungry, and he doubts anyone will go off the program.

“No one will be going off of the National School Lunch Program unless the new federal rules cause them to lose their shirt financially and they opt for a different way to feed children,” Crandall said.

But nothing in the bill says they have to “opt for a different way.”

Crandall said he wants to provide these schools with the same level of “local control” that charter and high schools enjoy in the state. He is against new federal regulations that require more fruit be served because students who pay full price will now have to pay more.

However, many educators and operators of school lunch programs are baffled as to the relevance of the bill.

In 2010, Arizona received $343 million in cash subsidies for the National School Lunch Program, cash that was used to feed, on average, more than half a million children in the state every day, according to statistics provided by the Arizona Department of Education.

Crandall thinks that new regulations within the congressional “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” passed in 2010 could become a financial burden for schools.

However, these new regulations will take time to be implemented and likely won’t cause drastic change, Johnson said.

One of the main provisions of the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” Crandall said he took issue with was the requirement lunchrooms raise their prices to match the subsidy for a free lunch child. That means over time, a lunchroom would have to raise its full-price lunch rates to around $2.77 or $2.79 over time, depending on the income level of their schools. Right now, many schools in Arizona charge lunch prices as low as $1.

“So those who get hurt the most is that middle income,” Crandall said. “People who don’t qualify for free lunch but are just above it.”

But that increase in price only has to happen by 10 cents a year, the federal law states.

Johnson, whose district right now charges only $1 for a full-price lunch, isn’t worried about the requirements since the increase would be so gradual, she said.

Johnson just doesn’t understand why Crandall thinks the bill is necessary, she said.

“It’s a mystery to me,” she said. “It’s really a program that should be it’s accessible for all children.”

Crandall contends the bill involves a “one word change (shall to may)” to participate in the NSLP “allows district K-8 grades to have the exact same flexibility that Arizona high schools and charter schools enjoy.”

However, statistics show that more students in Arizona qualify for free or reduced lunch than those who can pay full-price—leaving them statistically more at risk.

According to March 2011 data from the Arizona Department of Education, more than half the kids in Arizona qualify for free lunch. Seven percent of students qualify to pay less than full price.

Click chart for more info.

Nutrition Director Johnson doesn’t buy Crandall’s argument that the bill is a one-word change, though.

“I just have a hard time changing the word from “shall” to “may” in the program,” Johnson said. She’s worked in education for 35 years—in the nutrition department for 24. “Those aren’t baby words, they’re huge words.”

Even in a district like Tucson’s Catalina Foothills, Morely said, with 8.8 percent on free and reduced, it’s highly unlikely those children would go without lunch. That would leave the school no other option but to feed them out of pocket.

Others are skeptical that schools would make free lunches on their own dime if they opted out of the program.

“Really?” Johnson asked. “Is somebody just going to sit back and make sandwiches for 10 percent of your students?”

Mejdrich is a senior at the University of Arizona and is the Bolles Fellow this semester covering the Legislature. The fellowship was named to honor former Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles who was assassinated in the line of duty.

Green Party's Stein gives alternative address

2012-01-25T09:13:00.000-08:00

(Gazette Editor's note: There is an alternative this election year. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein delivered a "Peoples State of the Union" address in response to the Democrat and Republican versions. Here is an abbreviated version. It's still long, but we think it's well worth a read.)

A PEOPLE’S STATE OF THE UNION:
A GREEN NEW DEAL FOR AMERICA

Presented by Dr. Jill E. Stein, Green Party presidential candidate, January 2012 ~ www.JillStein.org

Good evening and thank you for this opportunity to talk with you tonight. We’re here to talk about the actual state of our nation, and how we can reclaim the promise of our democracy and the peaceful, just green future we deserve. We have heard President Obama deliver his State of the Union Address. And we heard the Republican response. Each claims to have the answer, and that the other was an obstacle to progress.

But the truth is both sides – despite the rhetoric – are responsible for the harsh policies driving our economy and our democracy into deep crisis. Simply put, they place the interests of Wall Street ahead of the needs of everyday people and the long term welfare of our nation.

So tonight, we are going to talk about the major problems that are not being solved by the political establishment. And we will focus on key game-changing solutions that have been kept off the table for too long.

As we speak tonight, our economy is not working for the vast majority of Americans.

One hundred and forty-six million people – that’s nearly one in every two Americans – is now living below or near the poverty level. The stress falls hardest on our most vulnerable and disadvantaged, with the majority of children, half of our elders, three quarters of Latinos, and two thirds of African Americans living in or near poverty.

Last year, one million Americans lost their health insurance, raising the numbers of the uninsured to almost 50 million of our people. Over 6 million Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure.

Thirty million college students and recent graduates are trapped in the financial prison of student loan debt. Most students must take out costly loans to meet the skyrocketing cost of tuition. Yet paying off those loans is almost impossible as young people face double-digit unemployment and much lower pay – 40% less – than their parents’ generation received for the same work.

Overall, nearly 25 million Americans are unemployed or unable to find full time work. And even those who have jobs are struggling, because wages have been declining for American workers, and are now lower on average than in 1996. Household income has fallen faster since the official end of the recession than during the recession itself, because the so-called “recovery” is made up of mostly low paying jobs.

Over seven million are under "correctional supervision", 10 times greater than in 1965, as incarcerating poor people – disproportionately of color - has become big business with the failed war on drugs. And more African American males are now locked up in US prisons than were slaves in 1850.

America’s creed is “With Liberty and Justice for All.” That is a creed of Equality. But right now we are experiencing the worst economic inequality in our nation’s history. The gap between the very rich and the many poor has never been so great. The wealthiest 1% in America now own as much wealth as 90% of all Americans. Those over 65 hold, on average, 47 times as much wealth as heads of households who are under 35. White families own, on average, twenty times as much as Black families. Such inequality is unacceptable, unconscionable* and un-American.

While the economy does not work for the vast majority, it does work for a few; at least for now.

The owners of the big corporations are enjoying historic profits, with a record $2 trillion in cash reserves at home and $1.4 trillion overseas. Though the corporate elite are richer than ever, they are contributing less than ever to the tax base that keeps the infrastructure going that their profits rely on – schools, transportation, clean air and water, safe food, the legal system, the police, and the military. In fact, 30 major corporations paid no corporate income tax at all over the last three years, despite making $160 billion in profits. And the big banks – whose fraud and greed crashed the economy to start with – are bigger than ever, with the six biggest banks now controlling capital equivalent* to 60% of all economic activity in this country.

To be clear: the greed for record profits is what got us into this mess in the first place. Of course it wasn’t greed alone. It was the capture of both political parties by Wall Street and other powerful corporations that buy influence with campaign contributions and lobbyists. Using this routine currency of American policy making, Democrats and Republicans alike dismantled protections against waste, fraud and abuse by Wall Street.* This bipartisan cooperation enabled greed to crash the economy. That not only killed jobs, it also depressed tax revenues – which has been one of the biggest drivers of the federal deficit. That deficit has also been made worse by unconscionable spending choices: notably the 4 trillion dollars spent on the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and trillions more spent on the bloated Pentagon budget, tax giveaways for the wealthy, and bailouts for Wall Street.

And now, the political establishment in the White House, Congress, and state governments are making matters far worse, doing the opposite of what we need, by inflicting needless, harsh austerity policies on the country.

It is time to break free from the old economy, and the old politics.

It’s time for a Green New Deal for America.

A GREEN NEW DEAL

The Green New Deal is an emergency four part program of specific solutions for moving America quickly out of crisis into the secure green future.

We call these solutions a Green “New Deal” because they are inspired by the New Deal programs that helped us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. And these solutions are “Green” because they create an economy that makes our communities sustainable and healthy.

First, we will guarantee the economic rights of all Americans, beginning with the right to a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work.

Second, we will transition to a sustainable, green economy for the 21st century, by adopting green technologies and sustainable production.

Third, we will reboot and reprogram the financial sector so that it serves everyday people and our communities, and not the other way around.

Fourth, we will protect these gains by expanding and strengthening our democracy so that our government and our economy finally serve We the People.

THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

For this reason, The Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that recognizes our rights to an economy that serves people. This means that everyone willing and able to work has the right to a job at a living wage. All of us have the right to quality education, health care, utilities, and housing. Each of us has the right to unionize, to fair taxation, and to fair trade.

This means that everyone willing and able to work has the right to a job at a living wage. All of us have the right to quality education, health care, housing and utilities. Each of us has the right to unionize, to fair taxation, and to fair trade.

We will end unemployment in America once and for all by ensuring a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work. This includes jobs that improve our environment, like clean manufacturing, organic agriculture, public transportation and clean renewable energy. It also includes jobs that provide urgently needed social infrastructure – for public education, health care, child care, elder care, youth programs, and arts and culture.

Our Full Employment Program will create 16 million jobs through a community-based direct employment initiative that will be nationally funded, locally controlled, and democratically protected against conflicts of interest and pay-to-play influence peddling. The program will directly create jobs in the public and the private sector. Instead of going to an unemployment office when you can’t find work, you can simply go to the local employment office to find a public sector job.

The Green New Deal’s Full Employment Program will change what it means to be a working person in America. It ends the agonizing wait for a business recovery that’s not in the cards. It creates jobs that can never be produced by trickle-down giveaways to the rich. And it will move our economy decisively because it will put paychecks back in people's pockets and put customers back in stores. And all by meeting needs of our communities and making them healthy, just and sustainable.

Full Employment is the first, and central part of the Green New Deal’s Economic Bill of Rights. But life is more than work and paychecks. We must fulfill the full promise of the Economic Bill of Rights.

Therefore, my administration will honor the right to quality health care through an improved Medicare for All program. This will provide comprehensive care for all. It will be free to consumers at the point of delivery, but will save money overall by reducing the massive wasteful health insurance bureaucracy and by stabilizing medical inflation. And it restores freedom of choice so you pick your health care provider, and your care is decided by you and your provider– not by a profiteering insurance executive. This will be federally financed and democratically controlled.

We will honor the right to a tuition-free, quality public education from pre-school through college at public institutions. And we will forgive student loan debt left over from the current era of unaffordable college education.

We will honor the right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants. We will expand rental and home ownership assistance, create ample public housing, and capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.

We will honor workers rights, including the right to a living wage, a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal. The idea that the Bill of Rights does not apply to you when you enter your workplace is an idea that says that you are only free when you are not working. That’s not acceptable in America.

We will honor the right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – which will be made available to all through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.

We will honor that oldest of American rights, the right to fair taxation that’s distributed in proportion to ability to pay. And we will make any corporate tax subsidies transparent by putting these subsidies in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks in complicated tax codes.

A GREEN TRANSITION

The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into the new green economy. We will do this by shifting to green technologies and sustainable ways of making things. We must do this right now because the environment is the foundation for our economy – and for life itself. And that environment is deeply imperiled.

The benefits we get from the environment dwarf those that come to us from human economic activity – even when measured strictly in dollar terms. What we usually call “the environment” is really another word for Mother Nature’s economy. A business model that destroys our forests, our fisheries, our topsoil, our water supplies, our health, and our climate – is a business model that will inevitably collapse upon itself. And an economy that is addicted to ever-increasing supplies of oil is not only doomed, it is a national security disaster just waiting to happen.

If you are someone who wants to start a small business or cooperative in the green economy or in providing for other vital community needs, you will find an ally in the Green Transition Program. Right now, our federal government subsidizes the rich agribusiness corporations and the oil, mining, nuclear, coal and timber giants at the expense of small farmers, small business, and our children’s environment. We spend tens of billions every year moving our economy in the wrong direction. We will instead redirect that money to the real job creators who make our communities more healthy, sustainable and secure at the same time.

The Green Transition Program will provide grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors. These types of businesses provide a solid foundation for our prosperity – a prosperity that will not be offshored, outsourced or downsized, and that will be unaffected by the collapse of foreign credit markets.

This Green Transition Program will also redirect research money from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward for research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.

The 16 million jobs created by the Full Employment Program mentioned earlier will be the core of the Green Transition Program. It will provide jobs in sustainable energy, transportation and manufacturing infrastructure: clean renewable energy generation, energy efficiency retrofitting, intra-city mass transit and inter-city railroads, weatherization, “complete streets” that safely encourage bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing of the goods needed to support this sustainable economy.

A new world really is possible. We can, and must, shift to an economy in which 100% of our electricity is generated renewably. We can and must leave the old economy behind – which was based on mining, extraction, and dirty dangerous expensive nuclear power. We can and must stop poisoning ourselves, our children, and other living beings.

When we make the investment required to clean up our emissions and waste, our economy will be revitalized by the wealth that stays in America rather than being sent abroad to buy foreign oil. Our national security will no longer be vulnerable to disruption of oil supplies, and we won't have to send our people abroad to fight wars for oil. Health care costs will go down because the foundations of a green economy – clean energy, healthy food, pollution prevention, and active transportation – are also the foundations of human health. Or to put it another way, greening our economy also reduces the drivers of preventable chronic disease, which consume a staggering 75% of health care costs. All in all, this is an investment that will pay off enormously as we build healthy, just, sustainable communities.

REAL FINANCIAL REFORM

Speaking of investments, the takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. We do not need and should not tolerate the dictatorship of bankers and financiers who manipulate money without doing productive work and who enrich themselves at the expense of real businesses and real working people. It's time to take Wall Street out of the driver’s seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us.

That is why a third priority of the Green New Deal is real financial reform, beginning by breaking up the big banks and retaking our monetary policy from the Federal Reserve Banks. We will reboot and reprogram the financial sector so that everyday Americans no longer need to live in fear of periodic crashes that are not of our making.

Currently U.S. banks and corporations have huge cash assets that are badly needed for business expansion. Yet lending and investment for business expansion is stagnant. Meanwhile, financial institutions are profiting from speculative trading in stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, and derivatives. They are rearranging who owns existing productive assets instead of investing to create new productive assets. The rich get richer while the economy stagnates, unemployment persists, and needed investments in infrastructure and production are not being made.

The greed, speculation and fraud that crashed the economy continues unabated as we suffer through a recovery for the 1% alone. And it continues to threaten further recovery with backdoor bailouts, and the very real potential to tank the economy again.

It's time to really reform Wall Street so that working America has a chance. Here is what the financial reforms of the Green New Deal will do.

First, the debt overhang holding back the economy must be deleveraged by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens. An immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions - as called for in the Economic Bill of Rights – will be coupled to the creation of a federal bank with local branches to take over distressed mortgages and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants. Forgiving student debt will be coupled to tuition-free higher education on the model of the post World War II GI Bill, which has paid for itself more than seven times over in increased government revenues from higher productivity, according to a study by the congressional Joint Economic Committee in the 1980s.

We will democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we’ll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department, along the lines proposed in the National Emergency Employment Defense – or NEED - Act of 2011 (HR 2990), sponsored by Representatives Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers.

Through the Green New Deal’s financial reforms, the federal government will retake its powers to create money, as granted by the Constitution in Article I, Section 8.

That’s just a beginning. Through the financial reforms of the Green New Deal:

• We will break up the oversized banks that are “too big to fail.”

• We will end taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We’ll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.

• We will adequately regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.

• We will restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.

• We will establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.

• We will support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.

Under the Green New Deal we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.

A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY

We have addressed the first three elements of the Green New Deal:

First, an Economic Bill of Rights, beginning with a Full Employment Program.

Second, a Green Transition Program to create a sustainable economy with green technologies and sustainable ways of making things.

Third, real financial reform that reboots the financial sector.

We won’t get those vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real, functioning democracy. We don’t have that in America today. And so, just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to restore the promise of American democracy.

When corporations and big money dominate our elections, government of, for, and by the people cannot take root. For this reason, we urgently need to Amend our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living, breathing human beings like you and me - not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.

The executive branch does not have much of an official role in constitutional reform. But a president certainly can, and should, use the bully pulpit to overturn the Un-American idea that the 1% have rights as a class that the rest of us are denied. And a president can, and should, support Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.

The Green New Deal also requires the enactment of the Voter Bill of Rights. This 10-point platform is the calling card of the modern day voting rights movement, and became a consensus agenda in the years following the stolen presidential election of 2000. Enactment of the Voter Bill of Rights will guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot for all voting, and require that all votes are counted before election results are released. It will also:

• Replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions.

• Celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday.

• Bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls.

• Do away with so-called “winner take all” elections in which the “winner” does not have the support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and proportional representation, systems most advanced countries now use to good effect.

• Replace big money control of elections with full public financing and free and equal access to the airwaves.

• Guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates.

• Abolish the Electoral College and implement direct election of the President.

• Restore the vote to ex-offenders who’ve paid their debt to society.

• Enact Statehood for the District of Columbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and full rights to self rule like the rest of us.

Democracy doesn’t just happen in our political system. It happens in our economy, every day. Today, more than 500,000 American workers are employed by cooperatives, over 120,000,000 people are member-owners of consumer cooperatives, nearly 40,000 businesses are organized as cooperatives, and another 11,000 which are not coops are employee-stock-owned companies known as ESOPs <

>. Coops have been shown to be very effective producers of jobs and wealth. Yet the federal government does not reward cooperative development in the same way it supports private business corporations; the corporations have their U.S. Department of the Treasury, while coops have no such entity.

The Green New Deal creates a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.

And speaking of the public broadcasting, the Green New Deal strengthens media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.

Finally, we must protect our liberty from those who would frighten us into surrendering our freedoms in the name of security. The Green New Deal will repeal the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties. It will prohibit the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI from conspiring with local police forces to suppress our freedoms of assembly and of speech. And it will end the war on immigrants – including the cruel, so-called “secure communities” program - which is terrorizing millions of Americans, both citizens and non-citizen immigrants, on no basis other than their perceived immigration status.

Protecting our liberty requires one additional, important step. Washington and Eisenhower, both generals who became president, warned us about the military industrial complex. They warned us about the dangers of empire.

The Green New Deal includes a 50% reduction in military spending and the withdrawal of U.S. military bases from the over 140 countries in which our military is now located. It calls for restoration of the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national defense. It creates a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives. Overall, it requires shifting from an economy in which the majority – the majority – of our discretionary budget is spent on war and the occupation of other countries, to an economy that provides the secure, just, peaceful future we all deserve.

COURAGE FOR THE URGENT TASKS OF THESE TIMES

Securing the Green New Deal depends not on me or the Green Party or some professional politician we see on television. It depends on all of us standing up and declaring that we’ve had enough of the insider-run big money politics that rules Washington. And it depends on each of us using our concern, our energy, our intelligence to find ways to improve the lives of our community.

This change will never come from the top. It never ever comes from the career politicians or the powerful Washington lobbyists. Real change has to come from the grassroots - from people who work hard every day pounding nails, driving trucks, changing sheets, teaching children, plowing fields, and making the real economy work.

Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.

Ancient domesticated dog skull found in cave

2012-01-25T08:24:00.000-08:00

The 33,000-year-old skull of a domesticated dog was extraordinarily well preserved in the Razboinichya cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. (Photo: Nikolai D. Ovodov)

Hodgins

UA physicist Greg Hodgins awaits results from the accelerator mass spectrometer. (Photo: D. Stolte/UANews)

skull

A profile of the Siberian dog skull shows the shortened snout and crowded teeth that helped scientists determine this ancient animal was domesticated. (Photo: Nikolai D. Ovodov)

By Shelley Littin

NASA Space Grant intern

University Communications

January 20, 2012 - If you think a Chihuahua doesn't have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something.

A 33,000-year-old dog skull unearthed in a Siberian mountain cave presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with an equally ancient find in a cave in Belgium, indicates that modern dogs may be descended from multiple ancestors.

An ancient dog skull, preserved in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia for 33,000 years, presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with equally ancient dog remains from a cave in Belgium, indicates that domestication of dogs may have occurred repeatedly in different geographic locations rather than with a single domestication event.

In other words, man's best friends may have originated from more than one ancient ancestor, contrary to what some DNA evidence previously has indicated.

"Both the Belgian find and the Siberian find are domesticated species based on morphological characteristics," said Greg Hodgins, a researcher at the University of Arizona's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and co-author of the study that reports the find.

"Essentially, wolves have long thin snouts and their teeth are not crowded, and domestication results in this shortening of the snout and widening of the jaws and crowding of the teeth."

The Altai Mountain skull is extraordinarily well preserved, said Hodgins, enabling scientists to make multiple measurements of the skull, teeth and mandibles that might not be possible on less well-preserved remains. "The argument that it is domesticated is pretty solid," said Hodgins. "What's interesting is that it doesn't appear to be an ancestor of modern dogs."

The UA's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the Siberian skull.

Radioactive carbon, or carbon-14, is one of three carbon isotopes. Along with naturally occurring carbon dioxide, carbon-14 reaches the surface of the Earth by atmospheric circulation, where plants absorb it into their tissues through photosynthesis.

Animals and humans take in carbon-14 by ingesting plants or other animals that have eaten plants. "Carbon-14 makes it into all organic molecules," said Hodgins. "It's in all living things."

"We believe that carbon-14 production is essentially constant over time," said Hodgins. "So the amount of carbon-14 present in living organisms in the past was similar to the levels in living organisms today. When an animal or plant dies, the amount of carbon-14 in its remains drops at a predictable rate, called the radioactive half-life. The half-life of radiocarbon is 5,730 years."

"People from all over the world send our laboratory samples of organic material that they have dug out of the ground and we measure how much carbon-14 is left in them. Based on that measurement, and knowing the radiocarbon half-life, we calculate how much time must have passed since the samples had the same amount of carbon-14 as plants and animals living today."

The researchers use a machine called an accelerator mass spectrometer to measure the amount of radioactive carbon remaining in a sample. The machine works in a manner analogous to what happens when a beam of white light passes through a prism: White light separates into the colors of the rainbow.

The accelerator mass spectrometer generates a beam of carbon from the sample and passes it through a powerful magnet, which functions like a prism. "What emerges from it are three beams, one each of the three carbon isotopes," said Hodgins. "The lightest carbon beam, carbon-12, bends the most, and then carbon-13 bends slightly less and carbon-14 bends slightly less than that."

The relative intensities of the three beams represent the sample's carbon mass spectrum. Researchers compare the mass spectrum of an unknown sample to the mass spectra of known-age controls and from this comparison, calculate the sample's radiocarbon age.

At 33,000 years old, the Siberian skull predates a period known as the Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM, which occurred between about 26,000 and 19,000 years ago when the ice sheets of Earth's last ice age reached their greatest extent and severely disrupted the living patterns of humans and animals alive during that time. Neither the Belgian nor the Siberian domesticated lineages appear to have survived the LGM.

However, the two skulls indicate that the domestication of dogs by humans occurred repeatedly throughout early human history at different geographical locations, which could mean that modern dogs have multiple ancestors rather than a single common ancestor.

"In terms of human history, before the last glacial maximum people were living with wolves or canid species in widely separated geographical areas of Euro-Asia, and had been living with them long enough that they were actually changing evolutionarily," said Hodgins. "And then climate change happened, human habitation patterns changed and those relationships with those particular lineages of animals apparently didn't survive."

"The interesting thing is that typically we think of domestication as being cows, sheep and goats, things that produce food through meat or secondary agricultural products such as milk, cheese and wool and things like that," said Hodgins.

"Those are different relationships than humans may have with dogs. The dogs are not necessarily providing products or meat. They are probably providing protection, companionship and perhaps helping on the hunt. And it's really interesting that this appears to have happened first out of all human relationships with animals."

ROBERT REICH: The State of Our Disunion

2012-01-24T16:21:00.000-08:00

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich's Blog

readersupportednews.org

24 January 12 - Who should have the primary strategic responsibility for making American workers globally competitive - the private sector or government? This will be a defining issue in the 2012 campaign.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama will make the case that government has a vital role. His Republican rivals disagree. Mitt Romney charges the President is putting "free enterprise on trial," while Newt Gingrich merely fulminates about "liberal elites."

American business won't and can't lead the way to more and better jobs in the United States. First, the private sector is increasingly global, with less and less stake in America. Second, it's driven by the necessity of creating profits, not better jobs.

The National Science Foundation has just released its biennial report on global investment in science, engineering and technology. The NSF warns that the United States is quickly losing ground to Asia, especially to China. America's share of global R&D spending is tumbling. In the decade to 2009, it dropped from 38 percent to 31 percent, while Asia's share rose from 24 to 35 percent.

One big reason: According to the NSF, American firms nearly doubled their R&D investment in Asia over these years, to over $7.5 billion.

GE recently announced a $500 million expansion of its R&D facilities in China. The firm has already invested $2 billion.

GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt chairs Obama's council on work and competitiveness. I'd wager that as an American citizen, Immelt is concerned about working Americans. But as CEO of GE, Immelt's job is to be concerned about GE's shareholders. They aren't the same.

GE has also been creating more jobs outside the United States than in it. A decade ago, fewer than half of GE's employees were non-American; today, 54 percent are.

This is all good for GE and its shareholders, but it's not necessarily good for America or American workers. The Commerce Department says U.S. based global corporations added 2.4 million workers abroad in first decade of 21st century, while cutting their US workforce by 2.9 million.

According to the New York Times, Apple Computer employs 43,000 people in the United States but contracts with over 700,000 workers abroad. It makes iPhones in China not only because of low wages there but also the ease and speed with which its Chinese contractor can mobilize their workers - from company dormitories at almost any hour of the day or night.

An Apple executive says "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible." He might have added "and showing a big enough profits to continually increase our share price."

Most executives of American companies agree. If they can make it best and cheapest in China, or anywhere else, that's where it will be made. Don't blame them. That's what they're getting paid to do.

What they want in America is lower corporate taxes, less regulation, and fewer unionized workers. But none of these will bring good jobs to America. These steps may lower the costs of production here, but global companies can always find even lower costs abroad.

Global corporations - wherever they're based - will create good jobs for Americans only if Americans are productive enough to summon them. Problem is, a large and growing portion of our workforce isn't equipped to be productive.

Put simply, American workers are hobbled by deteriorating schools, unaffordable college tuitions, decaying infrastructure, and declining basic R&D. All of this is putting us on a glide path toward even lousier jobs and lower wages.

Get it? The strategic responsibility for making Americans more globally competitive can't be centered in the private sector because the private sector is rapidly going global, and it's designed to make profits rather than good jobs. The core responsibility has to be in government because government is supposed to be looking out for the public, and investing in public schools, colleges, infrastructure, and basic R&D.

But here's the political problem. American firms have huge clout in Washington. They maintain legions of lobbyists and are pouring boatloads of money into political campaigns. After the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision, there's no limit.

Who represents the American workforce? Organized labor represents fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers and has all it can do to protect a dwindling number of unionized jobs.

Republicans like it this way, and for three decades have been trying to convince average working Americans government is their enemy. Yet corporate America isn't their friend. Without bold government action on behalf of our workforce, good American jobs will continue to disappear.

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including "The Work of Nations," "Locked in the Cabinet," "Supercapitalism" and his latest book, "AFTERSHOCK: The Next Economy and America's Future." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

Big sales due to dearth of decimal diligence

2012-01-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

LIFE'S OUTTAKES

By Daris Howard

Gazette Contributor

I just saw the most incredible sale! It was totally unbelievable! I’m sure you won’t believe me, but it was true. The flashing sign of a local drug store is advertising bread at “.99 cents” a loaf.

Wow! What a door crasher that must be! I bet they were sold out within minutes of opening. Bread for under a penny a loaf. Why I haven’t seen bread at that price since... Come to think of it, I’ve never seen bread at that price. Most bread I’ve seen costs around a dollar when it is on sale.

My father talked about prices like that during the depression, but this is the 21st century. I was thinking I might take a dollar in there and get a hundred loaves and tell them to keep the change. I considered getting one and trying to frame it somehow. That way when an old timer started to tell me what it was like in the good old days I could point to the plaque of bread on my wall and say, “Yeah, well I remember when a person could get bread for less than a penny.”

But the other day, I saw an even better sale on squash. It was at “.10 cents” a pound. That means, for a penny, I could get ten pounds of squash. Squash is all right, but what would I do with ten pounds of it, and if I bought less, how would they give me change? Unless... That does give me an idea. One of my neighbors stuffed my car so full of squash while I was at church last summer, that I had to walk home, since there was no room to drive. It could be payback time. For ten dollars I could get five ton of squash and fill his whole garage.

My wife thinks I am hallucinating and my mathematician brain is working overtime. I just like to look at things logically, especially when it comes to numbers. She says that is not what they mean, but I’m sure with the truth in advertising laws they are just having incredible sales.

I try to watch carefully for these kind of bargains. Opportunities like this don’t come around often, though I must admit I see more of them than I would suspect. Why, I saw in an ad that a bank was now giving 110 percent. What a return that is! My wife said it only meant their service, but I informed her that a person can’t give more than everything, or it would not have been everything in the first place. With that explanation I informed her that it has to be an interest rate. What else could it be? After all, they are in the banking business and they know numbers, so surely they know what 100 percent means.

Then there was a local store that had a 150% off sale. That is one of the best. I was going to walk into the store and tell them I wanted everything they had and they could just write me a check for the extra 50%.

She just shakes her head at me and refuses to let me anywhere near those great sales. She says I will embarrass her.

Well, I’ve got to wrap this up. I just noticed that the local grocery store has a sign that says its boxes of hot chocolate are “.99 cents”. I love hot chocolate and I have ten dollars in my pocket. I think I’ll go buy a thousand of them.

(Daris Howard, award-winning syndicated columnist and playwright, is author of “Super Cowboy Rides” and can be contacted at daris@darishoward.com; or visit his website at http://www.darishoward.com).

ASU gets sample of 2011 Martian meteorite

2012-01-23T09:27:00.000-08:00

SU currently owns the largest institutional piece of the martian meteorite Tissint.
Photo by: Laurence Garvie

By Nikki Cassis

ncassis@asu.edu

ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration

ASU’s Center for Meteorite Studies has acquired a significant new sample for its collection: a rare Martian meteorite that fell in southern Morocco in July 2011. It is the first Martian fall in about 50 years.

Since the observed fall of the famed Ensisheim meteorite in 1492, there have been 1,200 recovered meteorite falls.

A “fall” is a meteorite that was witnessed by someone as it fell from the sky, whereas a “find” is a meteorite that was not observed to fall but was later found and collected. Only a handful of witnessed meteorite falls occur each year.

The chance of finding a meteorite is exceedingly small. The chance of witnessing a meteorite fall and finding it is even smaller – and the probability that the fall is a Martian meteorite is smaller yet.

“Martian falls are extremely rare,” said Laurence Garvie, collection manager for the center. “Less than 0.5% of falls are Martians. This new sample is probably one of our most prized pieces and, without a doubt, one of the most significant additions to our collection in several decades.”

Consisting of specimens from about 1,700 separate meteorite falls and finds, meteorites in the center’s collection represent samples collected from every part of the world. Most meteorites found on Earth come from the asteroid belt, but some from the Moon and Mars exist as well. These rare samples constitute a small but important part of the center’s collection.

While a few new Martian meteorite finds are reported each year, there have been only four recovered Martian falls prior to 2011.

Fragments of the planet Mars landed in the village of Chassigny, France, in 1815. Another fell on Shergotty, India, in 1865, and a third landed at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The fourth fell in Zagami, Nigeria, in 1962.

The center’s newly acquired sample – named “Tissint” – is a significant meteorite, as it is only the fifth known Mars meteorite fall. The center holds small research and display pieces of each of the known Martian falls and also has six Martian finds in its collection. There are a total of 61 known distinct Mars meteorites.

To date, nearly 7 kilograms of stones have been collected from last summer’s Martian meteorite fall in Morocco. The 349 gram sample the center received is one of the largest from the fall, and it is by far the center’s largest Martian meteorite.

“As far as I am aware, this stone is currently the largest one from this fall in any research collection at a museum or university in the U.S.,” said Meenakshi “Mini” Wadhwa, director of the center and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“This is an important meteorite for our collection from the research and education standpoint,” Wadhwa said. “We plan to study it in our laboratories here at ASU to understand how and when it was formed on the planet Mars. We also intend to let students and the public enjoy it by highlighting it in a special display when the center moves to the new Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building IV this spring, which will house the center’s offices, meteorite preparation labs, a state-of-the-art collection storage vault and expanded gallery space for public viewing.”

With the main stone to be used on display, another smaller 21-gram sample will be used for research studies.

Account at the bank can be a relative thing

2012-01-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

OUT TO PASTOR

By Rev. James L Snyder

Gazette Contributor

God does not make grandmothers like He once did. At least not like MY grandmother. Grandmother never trusted such things as banks with her money. Someone once told my grandmother, “If you would put your money in the bank, they would pay you interest.”

With a confused look on her face she responded, “I have enough interest in my money, nobody else needs to bother about it.” That was that!

After my grandfather died, my wife and I had the opportunity to take grandma out for supper. It was a delightful restaurant and we thought it would be a real treat for her. More than once, I had to keep her from getting up and serving coffee to the rest of the people in the restaurant. After all, she did that at the church suppers. Why not here. “I’ve got two good legs,” she protested.

Then came time to pay the check and the waiter brought the check and laid it in front of me. I immediately took a credit card out of my wallet and laid it on the check.

I could tell grandma had never seen a credit card before.

“Put that away,” she said. “I believe that man wants you to pay for our supper. Don’t you have any money?”

“I’m paying for our supper with my credit card,” I explained.

“Oh, dear,” she moaned. “You know I don’t believe in cards. Cards are of the devil, and I have never had a deck of cards in my house. I’m a little surprised that you, a minister, would be fooling around with such things of the devil.”

She insisted we tip the waiter in “good ole American cash.” I am not sure if grandma ever really understood the credit card. She bought nothing on credit and did not accept credit. Everything had to be done in cash. She often quoted the scripture verse that says, “Owe no man any thing . . .” (Romans 13:8 KJV), which she took quite literally.

As grandma got older, she began to rethink the business of opening a bank account. Without telling anyone, she decided to go to the bank and open an account. She had saved up $50 for this purpose. Grandma nervously entered the bank and walked up to the man sitting at the desk marked “New Accounts.”

“Good morning, Ma’am. I’m Gary Goodman. How can I help you today?”

The man seemed pleasant enough, and grandma thought entrusting him with the delicate job at hand was probably safe.

“I wanna open an account,” she mumbled.

“Fine. I’ll get you all set up. It won’t take but a few minutes.” With that, he took out some papers and laid them on his desk in front of grandma.

“Now,” he said, “let’s begin. What is your name?”

She told him.

“O.K. What is your address?”

“What?”

“What is your address?”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“I’m just filling out the form, Ma’am.”

The young man, a little confused with her hesitancy, said, “We can come back to that. What is your date of birth?”

Grandma’s face turned a little red. “What do you want to know that for,” she gasped?

“I’m just filling out the forms. Can you give me your telephone number?”

That did it for grandma. She got up from her seat and looked him right in the face and said, “Young man, I don’t know who you think you are, but I am not interested in your advances. I’m old enough to be your mother. You ought to be ashamed.”

Just then the manager of the bank walked by.

"Mary, what are you doing here?”

The manager quickly assessed the situation and told the young man he would take care of this customer and tried to console my grandmother.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into young folk these days,” she whispered.

Barely concealing his his smile he said, “I’ll take care of you, Mary,” he assured her. He knew all the information about her and quickly filled in the paper work and walked grandma to the teller for her first deposit.

Grandma handed the teller a crumpled $50 bill. The teller took it and gave her a deposit receipt.

“Where’s my money?” grandma demanded.

“It’s safe in the bank, Ma’am.”

“How do you know my money from everyone else’s?”

“The money is all deposited in the bank, and if you need any, all you do is write a check.”

She showed grandma how to write out a check. By now grandma was confused and more than a little exasperated. Quickly grandma wrote out a check for $50 and handed it back to the teller.

“You’re withdrawing all your money?”

“Yes.”

The teller counted out $50 and handed it to her. Grandma looked at the teller and said, “No. I want MY money.” The teller retrieved the crumpled $50 bill and handed it to grandma.

As she walked out, the teller heard her mumble, “What a crazy way to run business. No wonder banks fail.”

There is only one sure account I can bank on. Jesus said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:” (Matthew 6:19-20 KJV).

2012-01-22T12:29:00.000-08:00

OPEN LETTER TO GC SUPE DAWSON

Shirley,

This afternoon neighbor Bob Nichols asked if I'd heard anything from the Gila Co. Elections Dept. about training sessions for poll workers for the upcoming election. I replied I hadn't, but would call as soon as I returned to the house. I called and inquired and a lady told me that there would only be one worker at our local polling place - the Gisela Community Center for a period of four (4) hours to accept mail in ballots. She said we'd receive a letter from the county next week.

I said that since we hadn't heard anything, we figured we'd been replaced by ACORN people. This evening I called Bob and told him what the lady told me and he said she called him after talking to me.

Too many questions arise here. What about those who plan on marking a ballot at their usual polling place? (Lady said some polling places would be combined). Bob used the word DISENFRANCHISED. Is the elections dept going to inform all registered Republicans and the two "Greens" by mail that there won't be traditional polling places for some precincts?

If the E.D. is smart they'll send mail-in ballots to all those eligible to vote and tell them they WON'T be able to vote at their regular polling place. That key word is smart. Good luck with that.

Who will count these ballots, ACORN people? Will there be witnesses to the counting? Too much is at stake here. E.D. has to start with notices every day (in the local media) telling Gila Co. voters what is going to happen.

YOU BETCHA,
George Demack

PHS students win 33 awards at business event

2012-01-21T10:25:00.000-08:00

Forty Payson High School DECA (a business-marketing student organization) members attended the Arizona DECA Central District Conference on Thursday, January 12th, and competed against 900 other students. Our chapter members earned 33 awards at the conference. Students take a written 100 question test, and participate in marketing related role plays and case studies.

Winning overall trophies were Arianna Paulson, Jordyn Fruth, Nick McMullen, Eric Vohs and Tanner Hintze. Winning medals for the Written test were Bethany Sprinkle, Fawn Dugan, Kyle Marshall, Joe Davis, Laura Slatalla, Amanda Hartnell, Hayli Egbert, Karen Williams, Ernesto Hendrix, Arianna Paulson, Tyler Peters, Will Dougherty, Dylan Kasten, Shayna Neal, Justice Owens, Dillon Walker, Jordyn Fruth, Nick McMullen, and Tanner Hintze.

Winning medallions for their role plays were Karen Williams, Ernesto Hendrix, Arianna Paulson, Kayla Percell, Jesse Barry, Tyler Croy, Jordyn Fruth, Nick McMullen, Tanner Hintze and Eric Vohs.

Stop the corporate takeover of democracy

2012-01-21T10:17:00.000-08:00

By Sen. Bernie Sanders

Reader Supported News

readersupportednews.org

20 January 12 - The corporate barbarians are through the gate of American democracy. Not satisfied with their all-pervasive influence on our culture, economy and legislative processes, they want more. They want it all.

Two years ago, the United States supreme court betrayed our Constitution and those who fought to ensure that its protections are enjoyed equally by all persons regardless of religion, race or gender by engaging in an unabashed power-grab on behalf of corporate America. In its now infamous decision in the Citizens United case, five justices declared that corporations must be treated as if they are actual people under the Constitution when it comes to spending money to influence our elections, allowing them for the first time to draw on the corporate checkbook – in any amount and at any time – to run ads explicitly for or against specific candidates.

What's next … a corporate right to vote?

Don't laugh. Just this month, the Republican National Committee filed an amicus brief in a US appeals court contending that the natural extension of the Citizens United rationale is that the century-old ban on corporate contributions directly to candidates and political parties is similarly unconstitutional. They want corporations to be able to sponsor candidates and parties directly while claiming with a straight face this would not result in any sort of corruption. And while, this month, they take no issue with corporations being subject to the existing contribution limits, anyone paying attention knows that eliminating such caps will be corporate America's next prize in its brazen ambition for absolute control over our elections.

The US Constitution has served us very well, but when the supreme court says, for purposes of the first amendment, that corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, our democracy is in grave danger.

I am a proud sponsor of a number of bills that would respond to Citizens United and begin to get a handle on the problem. But something more needs to be done – something more fundamental and indisputable, something that cannot be turned on its head by a rightwing supreme court.

That is why I have introduced a resolution in the Senate (introduced by Representative Ted Deutch in the House) calling for an amendment to the US Constitution that says simply and straightforwardly what everyone – except five members of the United States supreme court – understands: corporations are not people with constitutional rights equal to flesh-and-blood human beings. Corporations are subject to regulation by the people. Corporations may not make campaign contributions – the law of the land for the last century – or dump unlimited sums of money into our elections. And Congress and states have broad power to regulate all election spending.

I did not introduce this lightly. In fact, I have never sought to amend the Constitution before. The US Constitution is an extraordinary document that, in my view, should not be amended often. In light of the supreme court's Citizens United decision, however, I see no alternative. The ruling has radically changed the nature of our democracy. It has further tilted the balance of power toward the rich and the powerful at a time when the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good.

At a time when corporations have more than $2tn in cash in their bank accounts, make record-breaking profits and swarm Washington with their lobbyists 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the highest court in the land to suggest that there is just not enough corporate "speech" in our system defies the bounds of reason and sanity. The ruling already has led to plans, for example, by industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch to steer more than $200m – potentially much more – to conservative groups ahead of election day 2012. Karl Rove has similar designs.

Does anybody really believe that that is what American democracy is supposed to be about?

I believe that the Citizens United decision will go down as one of the worst in our country's history – and one that demands an amendment to our Constitution in order to restore sovereign power to the people, as our nation's founders intended.

If we do not reverse it and the culture of corporate dominance over our elections that it has exacerbated, there will be no end to the impact that corporate interests have on our campaigns and our democracy.

Green Party's Stein joins corporate protests

2012-01-20T11:24:00.000-08:00

(WASHINGTON D.C.) ~ Tens of thousands of Americans in over 130 cities gather today at federal courthouses and in public squares, nearly the two-year anniversary of Citizens United v. FEC, to reject the doctrines of corporate personhood and money is speech. Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate, is a lead speaker today in Washington, D.C., where she joins protesters on the steps of the court building of the Supreme Court of the United States. Dr. Stein joins leading members of the Move to Amend coalition, as well as Thom Hartmann, Medea Benjamin, and others in this role.

"Since 1996, the Green Party has called for a constitutional amendment to abolish the doctrine of corporate personhood," said Stein. "Greens have been ahead of the curve, but today, the curve has caught up with us, and now this movement for a constitution that serves we, the people, has gathered a historic momentum."

The Move to Amend coalition, responsible for today's Occupy the Courts actions, is by far the nation's largest and most diverse coalition working to overturn Citizens United v. FEC. In addition to today's actions, local Move to Amend affiliates are instigators of the dozens of municipal and local government resolutions already adopted this year calling for constitutional reform.

Move to Amend is a genuinely non-partisan coalition in that its leadership includes members of various political parties, as well as independents. Among the prominent Green Party members who are co-founders of Move to Amend are David Cobb (2004 Green Party presidential nominee), Leesa George Friday (co-chair of the Black Caucus of the Green Party of the United States), Ben Manski (former national party co-chair, 2001-2004), and Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap (a local elected official in northern California).

What about the Super PACs, Rick?

2012-01-20T11:14:00.000-08:00

(Gazette Blog editor's note: Now this is the kind of Republican we need more of.)

Baton Rouge, LA– Governor Charles E. “Buddy” Roemer, a legitimate presidential candidate who the Republican Party finds it convenient to ignore, made the following statement today when asked about Texas Governor Rick Perry exiting the race and endorsing Newt Gingrich:

“I wonder if Newt also gets Perry's seven Super PACs now,” asked Roemer.

“It’s too bad, really. Governor Perry could’ve made a difference like he made in Texas, but he chose not to. Campaign Finance Reform is the key first step to economic and jobs reform and Rick Perry never had a clue. Like all the others, he didn't have experience fighting corruption as Governor and Congressman as I did.”

“You want to find the missing jobs in America? Follow the money to Wall Street and the outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere. We need a President who is free to lead, not a fundraiser, and Rick fell victim to the big check and the special interests.”

Governor Buddy Roemer is a four-term Congressman and former Governor of Louisiana. He is known for refusing PAC and special interest money, implementing campaign finance reform, turning around Louisiana’s failing economy and cutting the state’s unemployment rate in half in just four years.

Rick Perry calls it a campaign: Adios, Mofo

2012-01-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

Former Texas Governor and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry brandishes a colt revolver for cameras, April 15, 2010. (photo: Rodger Mallison/MCT)

By Paul Begala

The Daily Beast

readersupportednews.org

19 January 12 - Let us not allow Rick Perry to exit stage right - far right - without a final word or two. What can be said about a man who burst onto the national scene by toying with secession, as if 600,000 dead in the Civil War weren't enough?

Rick Perry appealed to the darkest angels of our nature. In his final debate appearance, standing in the metaphorical shadow of Fort Sumter, he said the state of South Carolina "is at war" with the federal government - and he said it with approval. Perry called Social Security a Ponzi scheme and "a monstrous lie." He attacked the constitutionality of Medicare. He openly and dishonestly called our president a socialist. He said he would reinvade Iraq. He almost certainly executed an innocent man.

And for a time he was in first place among Republican presidential candidates.

We will, of course, remember Perry more for his spectacular stupidity than for his open desire to roll back the clock to 1861. Perry is a dope, and now all the world knows it. If he lives to be 100 he will be remembered for his "Oops" moment - when he couldn’t recall the three government agencies he wanted to abolish. To be sure, even the smartest of people can have a brain freeze, but Perry's cerebrum has been on dry ice for decades.

The pride of Texas A&M can now slink back home, defeated and disgraced, where he can try to explain to the lobbyists and billionaires who funded his campaign how he squandered a huge fortune and blew a big lead. In the most modestly gifted field in memory, Perry stood out. His incoherent debate performances, his weird, rambling, giddy speech in New Hampshire, his embarrassingly low vote totals, will define him for the rest of his career.

He earned the support of just 14,323 voters - a good turnout for a Texas high-school football game, but piss poor for a presidential campaign rolling in dough. The final reports aren't in - and the spending is likely to be much higher - but a quick assessment of the amount of money Perry's campaign and the pro-Perry super PAC spent comes out to $21.16 million. Again, that total will rise dramatically, but right now it looks like Team Perry spent at least $1,477 per vote. He could have given each of his voters a thousand dollars and saved money.

Right now it looks like Team Perry spent at least $1,477 per vote. He could have given each of his voters a thousand dollars and saved money.

Of course, some will blame it on Texas. And my beloved Lone Star State is the presidential Hall of Shame. John Connolly and Phil Gramm ran presidential campaigns that spent as recklessly as Perry, with similarly disastrous results. And George W. Bush ran a great campaign - and went on to be the worst president in a century. I don't know what it is, and I can't explain it. Perhaps Perry will cool the presidential dreams of the next good-looking airhead to rise in the Lone Star State. If so, he will have accomplished something lasting after all.

And so we bid Rick Perry farewell. But not with the socialist French phrase "Adieu." Instead, we use the pidgin Spanish Perry himself used to say goodbye to a group of journalists in 2005: "Adios, mofo."

President Obama stands up to big oil

2012-01-19T10:38:00.000-08:00

By Robert Redford

Reader Supported News

readersupportednews.org

18 January 12 - Let's face it: Big Oil is used to getting its way. But not today... and we have President Obama to thank for standing up to them in spite of the political risk.

President Obama has just rejected a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline - a project that promised riches for the oil giants and an environmental disaster for the rest of us.

His decision represents a victory of historic proportions for people from throughout the pipeline path and all across America who have waged an uphill, years-long fight against one of the most nightmarish fossil fuel projects of our time.

But make no mistake: Big Oil is going to fight back hard and fast.

Why? Because this was a prime-time fight. The oil giants made sure of that.

Big Oil had their Congressional boosters put the president to an election-year test by forcing him to decide the pipeline's fate within 60 days. Then, the oil lobby itself rolled out its biggest PR guns to get the job done.

The head of the American Petroleum Institute sent the White House a very public and blatant warning: Approve the Keystone XL or face "huge political consequences."

Because Big Oil lost, this is not the end of the fight. This is the beginning of the real battle for America's energy future.

That battle will be fought in Congress, where Representatives who've collected $12 million from the Oil & Gas industry over the past two years are sure to try to raise Keystone XL from the dead.

So when you hear Big Oil call Keystone XL a national jobs plan - ask "Are you kidding me?" A single pipeline project is not a jobs plan. Economic security is to be found in clean energy not in dirty energy that threatens us with oil spills and ever worsening harm from climate change.

And when you hear Big Oil say that we need Keystone XL for our security - tell them to get real. Energy security comes from reducing our dependence on oil, not from a pipeline that would leave us with the risk but send the tar sands oil overseas.

The president stood up to Big Oil and listened to Americans saying: "We're done with fossil fuel schemes that destroy our land, poison our water and wreak havoc with our climate so that oil companies can make out like bandits." Now we need to continue to stand with the president and make it clear that tar sands pipelines are not in our national interest.

Rural lawmaker: state parks should keep fees

2012-01-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

Tonto Natural Bridge would benefit from legislation introduced by a rural lawmaker mandating that state parks be allowed to keep the revenue they collect from entrance fees and other sources.

By JESSICA TESTA

Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – Arizona State Parks would be able to protect the revenue it raises from budget sweeps and use it for park operations under legislation proposed by a rural lawmaker.

Rep. Karen Fann, R-Prescott, whose district is home to five state parks, said it was “penny wise and pound foolish” for the Legislature to cut the agency’s funding so drastically over the past few years.

“Our state parks contribute to jobs and economic development. Especially in rural areas, they’re the ones bringing in business to local restaurants and hotels,” said Fann, the author of HB 2362.

The bill would create a fund allowing Arizona State Parks to keep all of the money generated from gate fees, concession fees, souvenir sales and all unconditional gifts and donations not specified for particular projects.

The money would go toward operation and maintenance costs for the entire parks system. The state wouldn’t be able to pull money from the agency to help balance its budget, as it has done in the past, Fann said.

“We’re asking the Legislature that we make sure, from here on out, that we don’t touch their fund,” she said. “Hands off this one. No sweeps of this one.”

The fund would not only protect park budgets but also ensure that Arizona State Parks is following rules set by the federal Bureau of Land Management, said Arizona State Parks Assistant Director Jay Ziemann.

Many of the state’s larger parks sit on land that the federal government has transferred to the state at little to no cost as part of the Recreation and Public Purposes Act. These parks have entered into various financial partnerships with private entities, such as concession companies, Ziemann said.

The Bureau of Land Management requires that all money generated by these parks be reinvested into the parks, not transferred to the state. Without the protection of the parks’ funds, the public-private partnerships would also not be eligible for renewal.

Arizona State Parks hasn’t received money from the state’s general fund since 2009. Meanwhile, more than $15 million has been swept from the agency’s revenues, Ziemann said.

“The Legislature directed the Arizona State Parks Board to act like a business, to go out and survive on their revenues,” Ziemann said. “Since then, they’ve essentially stolen money out of the till.”

Fann said her district’s parks brought in more than 500,000 tourists and $1.8 million last year, supporting 916 jobs.

“It could have been much worse, if not for the municipalities who stepped up to the plate and contributed a little money from their funds to help minimize the impact of the sweeps,” Fann said.

Rep. Russ Jones, R-Yuma, one of the nine primary sponsors of HB 2362, said that though partnerships with companies have helped raise park revenues, the state’s parks should not become “private retail venues.”

“Every one of our parks is a jewel and we should take pride in how they look and how they function,” Jones said.

Arizona State Parks:

• manages 30 state parks, 28 of which are currently open;

• receives 2 million visitors on average each year;

• provides more than 1,400 camping and RV sites;

• manages more than 600 trails;

• and includes the State Trails Program and the State Historic Preservation Office.

Answering life's questions with a sewing machine

2012-01-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

What would you do to spread a belief you so passionately hold? UA alumnus Paul Nosa is in the process of raising $7,500 to travel around the nation, sharing his artwork and encouraging people to be and think more creatively. (Photo courtesy of Paul Nosa)

"The Imminent Truth" is one of Nosa's fine art pieces. His patches are created on the spot and have included a bandana with a toupee eating a carrot, a tree with faces in it, an hybrid elephant fish, a man-dog, headphones enveloped around a bright red heart. (Photo courtesy of Paul Nosa, click to enlarge)

By La Monica Everett-Haynes

University Communications

January 13, 2012 - UA alumnus Paul Nosa travels with his solar powered sewing machine, stitching patches of the thoughts people choose to share with him.

Paul Nosa is a perfectionist – well, a reformed perfectionist.

A musician and formally trained artist who studied sculpture at the University of Arizona, Nosa is accustomed to art that is organized and linear.

But his current work stands in stark opposition.

Nosa is trying to raise $7,500 by Jan. 24 for a U.S. tour to share his artwork and promote his ideals around creativity and alternative energy sources.

And what he does is sew people's imaginations onto patches – or mini canvases – using a sewing machine powered by solar power or a bicycle electric generator.

"When you do a patch, it's just this little piece of fabric. It's nothing, really, so it frees up the creative process," said Nosa, who earned an interdisciplinary studies degree from UA with a focus in creative writing, French and sculpture. "You can do anything, so the ideas just explode."

Nosa, who has spent about seven years creating sewing art, is fundraising though Kickstarter to travel to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and New York and elsewhere to share his work.

"I'm trying to get people to think creatively and to get them to use their imaginations, which apparently, over the last seven years doing this, I realize most people have a hard time with," said Nosa, who has done several tours in the past in a range of West Coast cities and also New York, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Nosa began drawing as a young boy, eventually taking an interest in elaborate doodling.

"I was a terrible notetaker in high school because I was like, 'Forget the notes, I'm just going to draw pictures,'" said Nosa, who has since amassed more than four dozen sketchbooks.

But it was during a UA sculpture class that he realized how much he missed drawing and doodling.

"Those little doodles began what I started doing all the time," he said, adding that he made an active interest producing abstract art, only recently returning to realism – but without the pressure of perfectionism.

Then Nosa began to wonder if it would be possible to draw using a centuries-old bit of technology – the sewing machine.

"I would not be able to sew like this if I didn't draw so much," said Nosa who has, to date, made thousands of patches with conceivably millions of stitches.

"I believe all of life’s questions can be answered with a sewing machine," said Nosa, who uses a commercial-grade Singer CG590 and built a mobile station – the Solar Sewing Rover – so he could take his work to the streets.

Nosa draws a connection between sewing and function. "A friend of mine once told me, 'You can just sew more cash,'" he said. Nosa also has found that the machine and sewing skills often are equated with fixing and repair. "People will say to me, 'Oh. You can fix things.'"

But his work is more about the creative process and about relying more heavily on alternative sources of energy.

In promoting his work and encouraging people to open their minds, Nosa asks them to describe a scenario in five words, or less.

When an idea comes, Nosa sets off into his improvisation, stitching the imagined scenario onto square and rectangular pieces of cloth, using a whole range of thread colors. For his on-the-spot patches, Nosa generally will charge only a few dollars.

The sewing comes in fluid, unrehearsed form. No templates are used. And the work is powered by pure imagination. In the process of stitching, Nosa said he has learned something about people that troubled him.

"A majority of the people are surprisingly censored. They want their idea to be good. They don't want to say a bad idea and look foolish," Nosa said.

"But thinking it is a bad idea is like a crime against the art," he said. "If you worry about it before it gets out, you won't get anything done; nothing comes out."

This is what Nosa, in his individual work and travels, is working to help resolve.

"There's writer's block, but I don't believe there is an artist's block," Nosa said. "I'm trying to help people to get past that barrier and to be careful," he said, "and to learn that being creative is not that hard to do."

And, now, Nosa can see no other way.

"It's very intertwined in my living. It's so included in breathing and being alive," Nosa said. "If I don't do something, it's almost like I didn't live that day. It's just a part of my being."

How bankers get rewarded for screwing up

2012-01-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich's Blog

readersupportednews.org

17 January 12 - Mitt Romney is casting the 2012 campaign as "free enterprise on trial" - defining free enterprise as achieving success through "hard work and risking-taking." Tea-Party favorite Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina says he's supporting Romney because "we really need someone who understands how risk, taking risk … is the way we create jobs, create choices, expand freedom." Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donahue, defending Romney, explains "this economy is about risk. If you don't take risk, you can't have success."

Wait a minute. Who do they think are bearing the risks? Their blather about free enterprise risk-taking has it upside down. The higher you go in the economy, the easier it is to make money without taking any personal financial risk at all. The lower you go, the bigger the risks.

Wall Street has become the center of riskless free enterprise. Bankers risk other peoples' money. If deals turn bad, they collect their fees in any event. The entire hedge-fund industry is designed to hedge bets so big investors can make money whether the price of assets they bet on rises or falls. And if the worst happens, the biggest bankers and investors now know they'll be bailed out by taxpayers because they're too big to fail.

But the worst examples of riskless free enterprise are the CEOs who rake in millions after they screw up royally.

Near the end of 2007, Charles Prince resigned as CEO of Citgroup after announcing the bank would need an additional $8 billion to $11 billion in write-downs related to sub-prime mortgages gone bad. Prince left with a princely $30 million in pension, stock awards, and stock options, along with an office, car, and a driver for five years.

Stanley O'Neal's five-year tenure as CEO of Merrill Lynch ended about the same time, when it became clear Merrill would have to take tens of billions in write-downs on bad sub-prime mortgages and be bought up at a fire-sale price by Bank of America. O'Neal got a payout worth $162 million.

Philip Purcell, who left Morgan Stanley in 2005 after a shareholder revolt against him, took away $43.9 million plus $250,000 a year for life.

Pay-for-failure extends far beyond Wall Street. In a study released last week, GMI, a well-regarded research firm that monitors executive pay, analyzed the largest severance packages received by ex-CEOs since 2000.

On the list: Thomas E. Freston, who lasted just nine months as CEO of Viacom before being terminated, and left with a walk-away package of $101 million.

Also William D. McGuire, who in 2006 was forced to resign as CEO of UnitedHealth over a stock-options scandal, and for his troubles got a pay package worth $286 million.

And Hank A. McKinnell Jr.'s, whose five-year tenure as CEO of Pfizer was marked by a $140 billion drop in Pfizer's stock market value. Notwithstanding, McKinnell walked away with a payout of nearly $200 million, free lifetime medical coverage, and an annual pension of $6.5 million. (At Pfizer's 2006 annual meeting a plane flew overhead towing a banner reading "Give it back, Hank!")

Not to forget Douglas Ivester of Coca Cola, who stepped down as CEO in 2000 after a period of stagnant growth and declining earnings, with an exit package worth $120 million.

If anything, pay-for-failure is on the rise. Last September, Leo Apotheker was shown the door at Hewlett-Packard, with an exit package worth $13 million. Stephen Hilbert left Conseco with an estimated $72 million, even though the value of Conseco's stock during his tenure sank from $57 to $5 a share on its way to bankruptcy.

But as economic risk-taking has declined at the top, it's been increasing at the middle and below. More than 20 percent of the American workforce is now "contingent" - temporary workers, contractors, independent consultants - with no security at all.

Even full-time workers who have put in decades with a company can now find themselves without a job overnight - with no parachute, no help finding another job, and no health insurance.

Meanwhile the proportion of large and medium-sized companies (200 or more workers) offering full healthcare coverage continues to drop - from 74 percent in 1980 to under 10 percent today. Twenty-five years ago, two-thirds of large and medium-sized employers also provided health insurance to their retirees. Now, fewer than 15 percent do.

The risk of getting old with no pension is also rising. In 1980, more than 80 percent of large and medium-sized firms gave their workers "defined-benefit" pensions that guaranteed a fixed amount of money every month after they retired. Now it's down to under 10 percent. Instead, they offer "defined-contribution" plans where the risk is on the workers. When the stock market tanks, as it did in 2008, the 401(k) plan tanks along with it. Today, a third of all workers with defined-benefit plans contribute nothing, which means their employers don't either.

And the risk of losing earnings continues to grow. Even before the crash of 2008, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at University of Michigan found that over any given two-year stretch about half of all families experienced some decline in income. And the downturns were becoming progressively larger. In the 1970s, the typical drop was about 25 percent. By late 1990s, it was 40 percent. By the mid-2000s, family incomes rose and fell twice as much as they did in the mid-1970s, on average.

What Romney and the cheerleaders of risk-taking free enterprise don't want you to know is the risks of the economy have been shifting steadily away from CEOs and Wall Street - and on to average working people. It's not just income and wealth that are surging to the top. Economic security is moving there as well, leaving the rest of us stranded.

To the extent free enterprise is on trial, the real question is whether the system is rigged in favor of those at the top who get rewarded no matter how badly they screw up, while the rest of us get screwed no matter how hard we work.

The jury will report back Election Day. In the meantime, Obama and the Democrats shouldn't allow Romney and the Republicans to act as defenders of risk-taking free enterprise. Americans need to know the truth. The only way the economy can thrive is if we have more risk-taking at the top, and more economic security below.

No, USA is not No. 1 - we're actually No. 27

2012-01-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

OTHERWORDS

OP/ED

By Jim Hightower

nationofchange.org

"USA: We're No. 1!"

Oh, wait — Iceland is No. 1. But we did beat out Poland and Slovakia, right? Uh...no. But go on down the rankings and there we are! No. 27, fifth from the bottom. So our new national chant is, "USA: At Least We're Not Last!"

A foundation in Germany has analyzed the social justice records of all 31 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ranking each nation in such categories as health care, income inequality, pre-school education, and child poverty. The overall performance by the United States — which boasts of being an egalitarian society — outranks only Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey. Actually, three of those countries performed better than ours in the education of pre-schoolers, and Greece did better than the United States on the prevention of poverty.

Our bottom-of-the-heap ranking in social justice confirms the economic and political inequality that the Occupy movement is protesting. It also helps explain why this grassroots uprising in America has spread so rapidly to more than 600 communities and has generated such broad public support. After all, our nation is fabulously rich, ranking well ahead of nearly every other OECD member in national wealth, so there's no excuse for us sitting at the bottom of the list in education, health care, poverty, and other measures of a democratic and egalitarian society.

Bluntly put, We the People have let today's elites abandon America's founding principles of fairness, justice, and equal opportunity for all.

These privileged few have purchased our government, stolen the wealth and economic future of working families, and reduced America to a plastic imitation of the country we thought we had. The Occupy rebellion is long overdue and on target.

Join it.

ABOUT Jim Hightower

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

Republican Roemer actually makes a lot of sense

2012-01-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

Gazette Blog Editor's note: You're a diehard Republican and you're not happy with the Republican candidates for president. Imagine that. But have you considered Buddy Roemer? Here's something from his campaign folks that made us sit up and take notice. Unfortunately, the Republicans won't let him join in their reindeer games - the debates. But you know what happened to Rudolph.

Buddy Roemer for President

On this Martin Luther King Day, Governor Charles E. “Buddy” Roemer releases the following statement:

“Today we honor the legacy of a great American, whose two great lessons were to demonstrate the honor and value of every human being and to refuse to accept the historical corruption of that dream by the government. The battle against institutional corruption today is Dr. King’s battle replayed in our time. I promise a peaceful but unceasing rebellion against a system that favors the few and ignores the many. We will take back the American dream of Dr. Martin Luther King. I felt it as a kid, thanks to my mother and father and to Dr. King, and now, as a man, I pledge to do my part so that the dream will never die."

Governor Roemer has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to advancing civil rights. His parents were community leaders for justice and inclusion and instilled that same dedication in him. Having joined the NAACP more than 40 years ago, Roemer continues his efforts toward justice for all through dedication to the reform of a corrupt political system where big checks thrive, and average voters are silenced.

Roemer is a candidate for President of the United States. His website is www.BuddyRoemer.com.

Google and the Gazette celebrate MLK Day

2012-01-16T18:23:00.000-08:00

Best remedy for living in snow and ice: leave

2012-01-16T07:52:00.000-08:00

LIFE'S OUTTAKES

By Daris Howard

Gazette Contributor

I have decided that I am sick of snow and ice. It came to me all of a sudden one morning on my way to work. I was driving down the highway, heading south, minding my own business, when all of a sudden my pickup truck hit ice and decided it wanted to go home. I used to have a horse like that. Slacken the reign for one second and she was headed back to her pasture at full speed, with or without her rider. Anyway, when I hit the ice, the horizon zipped around a few times, and I found myself heading north on the same road.

No problem, I thought. Just act nonchalant about the whole thing. I just smiled and waved at people as they went by. They waved back. However, they didn’t smile and they were only waving with one finger. I then remembered I was on a divided highway. Just stay calm, I said to myself. No need to worry about the semi truck bearing down on me in the passing lane. He’s got plenty of room to stop.

He was able to get into the other lane just in time to avoid making sheet metal out of my little Toyota pickup. It must have confused him too, because he called me a few things that didn’t even come close to my real name.

So there I was, realizing that I am really getting sick of snow. It wasn’t the first time that week either. I thought it might be good to get some exercise. Why not go jogging? By the time I got all bundled up to go outside, I couldn’t even walk, let alone jog.

My wife suggested a stationary bike. I’ve always felt a stationary bike was an oxymoron - you know like “smart bureaucrat”. I found one in the paper for a good price. (A stationary bike I mean, not a smart bureaucrat.) My wife and I both agreed to work out on the bike, so we went to see it together. It was a nice one, worth a lot more than the $49.99 they were asking for it.

While my wife was writing the check, I turned to the owner, who was helping me load it. “Why are you selling it for only $49.99, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Well,” he replied, “if it’s under $50 then you can list it for free in the newspaper. I just wanted to get rid of the darn thing.”

“Why?” I queried further.

“Because, I’m sick of snow. I’m not going to ride that thing one more minute. Furthermore, I’m going to tie a snow shovel to the front of my pickup truck and drive down the road heading south. When I stop somewhere and someone asks me what that thing is tied to the front of my truck, I’m going to buy a home there and stay the rest of my life.”

That was a few weeks ago. Poor guy had spring fever really bad. Somehow the image of him in his truck heading south, with a snow shovel tied to the front, was all I could envision in my mind as the horizon spun by.

So, if you see a Toyota pickup truck with a snow blower tied to the front, just honk and wave and, if you don’t wave with just one finger, I will probably wave back.

AZ schools near bottom in national report card

2012-01-16T07:33:00.000-08:00

Click on the graphic to view Arizona’s education report card, which fell below the national average. (Cronkite News Service graphic by Brittny Goodsell)

By STEPHANIE SNYDER

Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Arizona schools were ranked in the bottom 10 states in a national report Thursday that gave the state a below–average grade in student achievement, teacher requirements and state spending, among other areas.

Arizona finished 44th in the annual report that measures state education policies and programs – a slight drop from its standing in last year’s report.

But Arizona was not alone: The report’s authors said 25 other states saw their scores drop because “the economy is having an impact.”

“A number of states had to cut programs due to budget constraints,” said Sterling Lloyd, senior research associate for the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which produces the report. “They just don’t have the money or they have to use the money for other purposes.”

Arizona earned an overall grade of C–minus, below the national grade of C. The state rose above the national average only on academic standards and assessments, but fell short in all five other categories.

Andrew LeFevre, spokesman for Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, said it is not surprising that Arizona did not score highly in all categories because the state has locally elected school boards, unlike some other states.

“(The report) is certainly something that we’ll be taking a look at,” LeFevre said. “I don’t think we’re going to be basing our educational policy off of a report like this.”

The report is based on a national survey that was taken in the middle of last year. LeFevre said the survey may not have reflected policy changes that the state is in the process of implementing in areas where it scored poorly, including new teacher and principal evaluations.

Arizona’s B-plus for assessments and accountability recognized the state’s success in implementing subject standards for language arts, math and science classes. Its assessment procedures help focus on school accountability, through statewide rankings and assistance for poor-performing schools.

Lloyd said all school systems did fairly well in that category – the overall national grade was a B – largely because of assessment requirements in the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Otherwise, Arizona did not do so well, earning grades of C to D-minus for K–12 achievement, opportunities for success based on family income and school enrollment, school finance, education alignment standards and teacher quality.

The state recorded some of the worst figures in the nation in subcategories for overall education spending, postsecondary education and efforts to improve teaching, according to the report.

Joe Thomas, vice president of Arizona Education Association, said the state’s rank in the report was disappointing, but justified, considering the categories where it scored poorly.

“Those are issues that Arizona is struggling with, so it’s understandable to see where that number comes from,” said Thomas, whose 31,000–member teachers union is the largest in the state.

Arizona schools are operating on 25 percent less money than they did a few years ago, due to the recession and budget cuts that have forced an increase in class sizes and fewer programs for teacher support, Thomas said.

“To be a teacher in Arizona right now – it’s a very frustrating experience,” he said. “There’s just so much that needs attention and we’re so limited on the funds we have right now that it’s going to be another difficult year.”

Some words that shouldn't be banned in 2012

2012-01-15T08:42:00.000-08:00

OUT TO PASTOR

By Rev. James L. Snyder
Gazette Contributor

Every year somebody, who does not really have a life, comes up with words that should not be used during the New Year. I am not sure where this started but it just goes to show that there are a whole lot of people who do not have much to do.

Topping the list this year of words not to be used is the word "amazing." Allegedly [which I think is one word that should not be used this year], 1,500 people voted to ban the word "amazing."

I think it is rather amazing that out of the 312,867,000 people living in the United States, 1,500 people tell us what not to say. Who are these 1,500 people? What do they have against the word "amazing?" Have they ever seen anything that was actually amazing?

Of all the words I would like to see canceled during this year, "amazing" is not one of them.

A few words have come to my attention that I would like to eliminate for the coming year. I know I am only one person but by Jehoshaphat, I am going to have my say.

The first word I would like to see banned would be "caucus." I have no idea what this word means. Sure, I can look it up in the dictionary and find out what it is supposed to mean, but when used in the political arena, I am all confused. It would surprise me if some of the commentators that use the word knew exactly what it means. After all, it takes all their concentration to read the teleprompter.

Yet, this word is employed in the process of determining who will be the nominee for the political office of President of the United States. I think it is interesting that in order to get to the White House every politician needs to start with a Native American caucus. Of all objecting in using this word, the Native Americans should be the loudest.

Another word I would like to see banned for the year is the word "polling." It seems no politician can do anything without first doing some polling. They will spend millions of dollars doing this polling. I would not mind so much if they did not call me on the telephone and waste my time. If everybody whom they call on the telephone in their polling was as sarcastic as I am, I do not put any faith in their polling at all. Mr. Politician, call me at your peril.

Contemporary politicians would not know what day of the week it was if it was not for the latest poll. Even though the Creator gave each politician two legs to stand on, they are always switching from one leg to the next. Now I know why a politician has a left foot and a right foot.

The only natural thing that lives by polls is a polecat. There may be some resemblance here.

The word "earmarks" is another one I would like to see banned for this coming year. A politician without his or her earmarks is like a skunk without his stink. If you take a skunk, you are going to have to put up with his stink.

I guess the politician needs to do something with his or her ears for they certainly are not employed in hearing anything from their constituents. If a politician insists on earmarks, I think we ought to do some marking of their ears.

When I was a youngster in school, my teachers found a wonderful use for my ears. Whenever they wanted me to do something, they would grab me by the ears and jerk me into the right direction. Where are those teachers when you really need her? I would like to help them with their ear jerking operation. I know. Let's call it the Ear Jerking Operation (EJO).

One final word I would like to see obliterated is the word "party." Especially when associated with something political. Let's face it. The political world is just one great big party after another, usually, at someone else's expense. If I could go to a party with somebody else sponsoring it and paying for it, I guess I would go to.

Whenever somebody asks me which political party I belong to I usually respond by saying, "The birthday party." At a birthday party, at least you get to eat cake and sometimes in the excitement get a little bit on your face. At political parties, everybody is eating their own words and ending up with egg on their face.

If are going to have a party let's make it a birthday party where everybody is invited and everybody gets a slice of cake. Make that two slices of cake.

I suppose there would be a whole lot of other words I could add to my list but there is one word I am not going to ban and that is God's Word. There is nothing more amazing to me than the relevance of God's word in my life today. One word I love is, "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6).

I am quite content to allow God have the last word in my life. I have found it to be amazingly true.

The Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, FL 34483. He lives with his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him at 352-687-4240 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.net. The church web site is www.whatafellowship.com.

Is this land still 'made for you and me'?

2012-01-14T08:49:00.000-08:00

Bill Moyers is returning to public television this month with “Moyers & Company.” (Photo: Chad Batka / The New York Times)

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Truthout

messenger@truthout.org

The traveling medicine show known as the race for the Republican presidential nomination has moved on from Iowa and New Hampshire, and all eyes are now on South Carolina. Well, not exactly all. At the moment, our eyes are fixed on some big news from the great state of Oklahoma, home of the legendary American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated later this year.

Woody saw the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Depression firsthand; his own family came unraveled in the worst hard times. And he wrote tough yet lyrical stories about the men and women who struggled to survive, enduring the indignity of living life at the bone, with nothing to eat and no place to sleep. He traveled from town to town, hitchhiking and stealing rides in railroad boxcars, singing his songs for spare change or a ham sandwich. What professional success he had during his own lifetime, singing in concerts and on the radio, was often undone by politics and the restless urge to keep moving on. “So long, it’s been good to know you,” he sang, and off he would go.

What he wrote and sang about caused the oil potentates and preachers who ran Oklahoma to consider him radical and disreputable. For many years he was the state’s prodigal son, but times change, and that’s the big news. Woody Guthrie has been rediscovered, even though Oklahoma’s more conservative than ever – one of the reddest of our red states with a governor who’s a favorite of the Tea Party.

The George Kaiser Family Foundation has bought Guthrie’s archives – his manuscripts, letters and journals. A center is being built in Tulsa that will make them available to scholars and visitors from all over the world.

Among its treasures is the original, handwritten copy of this song, Woody Guthrie’s most famous – This Land Is Your Land. The song extols the beauty of the country Guthrie traveled across again and again; its endless skyways and golden valleys, the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts. Yet his eye was clear, unclouded, and unobstructed by sentimentality, for he also wrote in its lyrics:

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,

By the relief office I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?

“Is this land made for you and me?” A mighty good question. The biggest domestic story of our time is the collapse of the middle class, a sharp increase in the poor, and the huge transfer of wealth to the already rich.

In an era of gross inequality there’s both irony and relevance in Woody Guthrie’s song. That “ribbon of highway” he made famous? It’s faded and fraying in disrepair, the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges, once one of our glories, now a shambles because fixing them would require spending money, raising taxes, and pulling together.

This land is mostly owned not by you and me but by the winner-take-all super rich who have bought up open spaces, built mega-mansions, turned vast acres into private vistas, and distanced themselves as far as they can from the common lot of working people – the people Woody wrote and sang about.

True, Barack Obama asked Bruce Springsteen and Woody Guthrie’s longtime friend Pete Seeger to sing This Land is Your Land at that big, pre-inaugural concert the Sunday before he was sworn in. And sing they did, in the spirit of hope and change that President Obama had spun as the heart of his campaign rhetoric.

Today, whatever was real about that spirit has been bludgeoned by severe economic hardship for everyday Americans and by the cynical expedience of politicians who wear the red-white-and-blue in their lapels and sing “America the Beautiful” while serving the interests of crony capitalists stuffing SuperPACs with millions of dollars harvested from the gross inequality destroying us from within.

But maybe – just maybe – the news that Woody Guthrie, once a pariah in his home state, has become a local hero is the harbinger of things to come, and that all the people who still believe this land is our land will begin to take it back.

Bill Moyers

A broadcast journalist for more than four decades, Bill Moyers has been recognized as one of the unique voices of our times, one that resonates with multiple generations. In 2012, at the age of 77, Moyers begins his latest media venture with the launch of "Moyers & Company." With his wife and creative partner, Judith Davidson Moyers, Bill Moyers has produced such groundbreaking public affairs series as "NOW with Bill Moyers" (2002-2005) and "Bill Moyers Journal" (2007-2010).

For his work, Moyers has received more than 30 Emmys, two prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, nine Peabodys, and three George Polk Awards. Moyers' most recent book, "Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues," was published in May 2011. He currently serves as president of the Schumann Media Center, a nonprofit organization that supports independent journalism.

Michael Winship

Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild of America, East, is senior writer of the new public television series "Moyers & Company," premiering in January 2012.

Lottery's Heritage Fund saving sandhill cranes

2012-01-14T08:25:00.000-08:00

From just over 4,000 in the late 1970s to over 34,000 today, more sandhill cranes are calling Arizona their winter home, in part thanks to the Heritage Fund. The Heritage Fund, which was created by a voter-initiative to use Arizona Lottery dollars to support wildlife conservation, has been used to help secure ideal habitat for the birds in southeastern Arizona.

“One reason for the increasing number of cranes in the Sulfur Springs Valley is the availability of prime wetland habitat that the birds require and that the Game and Fish Department has provided. Cranes that used to fly south to Mexico now stop in Arizona because of those habitats,” said Mike Rabe, a migratory bird biologist with the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

The impressive increase in sandhill cranes means good news for wildlife enthusiasts. Seeing hundreds or even thousands of cranes take to the skies, feed in the fields or come in to land is a thrilling sight. Sandhill cranes are large birds; adults have about an 80-inch wingspan and can stand about 47 inches tall.

“The cranes will remain in southeastern Arizona until mid-late February, so there is still plenty of time to see and hear thousands of them,” said Joe Yarchin, watchable wildlife program manager for the department.

The Heritage Fund’s direct impact on wildlife conservation is compounded by the economic benefit that wildlife viewing has on communities across the state, especially in rural areas. The city of Willcox estimates that $60,000 to $80,000 comes into the local economy from hotel, gas, restaurant, and other related purchases just during Wings over Willcox, a four-day bird viewing event.

Two of the department’s wildlife areas – the Willcox Playa Wildlife Area near Willcox and the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area near Douglas – offer visitors good viewing facilities, including bathrooms.

Sandhill crane viewing tips

The best viewing time is at first and last light when the cranes head out to feed, although it is possible to see them throughout the day during winter (until mid-February).

Listen for the birds: They are very vocal and can often be heard before they are seen.

Don’t forget your binoculars, spotting scopes, cameras and bird field guides.

Health insurer's AZ rate hikes 'unreasonable'

2012-01-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

Jan. 12, 2012 - Health insurance premium increases in Arizona and four other states have been deemed “unreasonable” by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today.

After independent expert review, HHS determined that Trustmark Life Insurance Company has proposed unreasonable health insurance premium increases in five states—Alabama, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wyoming. The excessive rate hikes would affect nearly 10,000 residents across these five states.

To make these determinations, HHS used its “rate review” authority from the Affordable Care Act (the health care law of 2010) to determine whether premium increases of over 10 percent are reasonable.

"Before the Affordable Care Act, consumers were in the dark about their health insurance premiums because there was no nationwide transparency or accountability," said Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Now, insurance companies are required to disclose rate increases over 10 percent and justify these increases. It’s time for Trustmark to immediately rescind the rates, issue refunds to consumers or publicly explain their refusal to do so."

In these five states, Trustmark has raised rates by 13 percent. For small businesses in Alabama and Arizona, when combined with other rate hikes made over the last 12 months, rates have increased by 27.2 percent and 18.1 percent, respectively. These increases were reviewed by independent experts to determine whether they are reasonable. In this case, HHS determined that the rate increases were unreasonable because the insurer would be spending a low percent of premium dollars on actual medical care and quality improvements, and because the justifications were based on unreasonable assumptions.

In addition to the review of rate increases, many states have the authority to reject unreasonable premium increases. Since the passage of the health care reform law, the number of states with this authority increased from 30 to 37, with several states extending existing “prior authority” to new markets.

Examples of how states have used this authority include:

* In New Mexico, the state insurance division denied a request from Presbyterian Healthcare for a 9.7 percent rate hike, lowering it to 4.7 percent;

* In Connecticut, the state stopped Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s largest insurer, from hiking rates by a proposed 12.9 percent, instead limiting it to a 3.9 percent increase;

* In Oregon, the state denied a proposed 22.1 percent rate hike by Regence, limiting it to 12.8 percent.

* In New York, the state denied rate increases from Emblem, Oxford, and Aetna that averaged 12.7 percent, instead holding them to an 8.2 percent increase.

* In Rhode Island, the state denied rate hikes from United Healthcare of New England ranging from 18 to 20.1 percent, instead seeing them cut to 9.6 to 10.6 percent.

* In Pennsylvania, the state held Highmark to rate hikes ranging from 4.9 to 8.3 percent, down from 9.9 percent.

Today’s announcement comes the same week that a report showed that health care spending has grown at remarkably low rates. According to an analysis done each year by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. health care spending experienced historically low rates of growth in 2009 and 2010. A recent study released by Mercer Consulting also showed a slow-down in the average employee health benefit cost to businesses.

The Affordable Care Act includes several policies, including rate review, to continue this slow growth. By fighting fraud, better coordinating care, preventing disease and illness before they happen and creating a new state-based insurance marketplace, it helps keep health care cost growth low.

For more information on the specific determinations made today, please visit http://companyprofiles.healthcare.gov/

For general information about rate review, visit: http://www.healthcare.gov/law/features/costs/rate-review/

Bill would give rural home buyers info on water

2012-01-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

By NICOLE GILBERT

Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – In the growing rural areas of Arizona, many home buyers learn too late that they aren’t assured an adequate supply of water, a state lawmaker contends.

That’s because unlike subdivisions in metro areas, those built in most rural areas aren’t required to have a 100-year assured water supply certified by the Arizona Department of Water Resources when they are built.

Home buyers, especially those who migrate from other areas of the country, often don’t know to ask questions about water supply, said Rep. Ed Ableser, D-Tempe.

“Protecting the consumer is vitally important for all of us,” he said.

Ableser has introduced a bill that he says would offer rural home buyers easier access to information on a home’s water supply. HB 2025 would require developers completing subdivisions to file the ADWR report on the water supply’s adequacy or inadequacy with the county recorder.

Under the current law, sellers of six plats or more must only share the report with the first buyer. Ableser said this leaves all subsequent buyers out of the loop.

The bill covers homes outside of active management areas, which primarily include the corridor from the Valley south to Nogales as well as Prescott.

Ableser has introduced the bill several times before without success, but he said statewide drought makes this a pressing issue.

“We don’t have enough water,” he said. “The only way to fix this is to allow people to choose where to purchase.”

Spencer Kamps, vice president of legislative affairs for the Central Arizona Home Builders Association, said it should be the responsibility of sellers to continue sharing the reports because those reports can change over time.

“To require us to file a public report, which is essentially a living document … we’re not sure it achieves the goal of giving buyers disclosure,” he said.

HB 2025 facts:

Author: Rep. Ed Ableser, D-Tempe.

• Key provision: Would require developers building homes after Jan. 1, 2013 to file official statements of water adequacy with county recorders in most of rural Arizona.

• Scope: Covers places outside of active management areas where developers must prove 100-year assured water supplies.

• Rationale: Under current law, only the first buyer of a home outside of an AMA must be informed of a water supply that’s been deemed inadequate.

• Status: Scheduled for a hearing Thursday, Jan. 19, before the House Committee on Agriculture and Water.

PUSD Superintendent O'Brien retiring

2012-01-12T14:31:00.000-08:00

GAZETTE BREAKING NEWS

Casey O'Brien (left) will announce his retirement next Tuesday, concluding a five-year stint as PUSD superintendent. (Courtesy photo.)

By Jim Keyworth

Gazette Blog Editor

Payson Unified School District Superintendent Casey O’Brien will announce his retirement at a school board meeting next Tuesday. His last day on the job will be June 30.

O’Brien, who is almost 56, has spent 22 years in education. After serving 8 years as a Navy pilot, he started teaching in the inner city in San Diego. Other stints included teaching on a reservation, in Flagstaff, Fort Huachuca, St. David, and Nogales. He has served as PUSD superintendent for five years.

“The progression went from teaching, to assistant principal, to principal, to assistant superintendent and then superintendent, so I feel very fortunate to have had a lot of experiences in a lot of great locations,” O’Brien said. “Payson has been great. The community has been so supportive, and this is the best staff I’ve had a chance to work with.”

O’Brien notified the school board last week when he met with them to talk about a contract extension. He said the board understood his decision and appreciated the lead time they will have to find a successor. At the meeting next Tuesday, the board will decide how to proceed in that process.

Here are excerpts from a conversation with Casey:

GAZETTE: So nothing could change your mind, even an offer from a larger district?

CASEY: No, because I went down that road being a finalist (last year) and I’ve been contacted by a couple of big districts this year, but that’s not who I am. Priscilla and I grew up in smaller rural communities, I’ve worked largely in rural communities, our house that we’ve built (near Sonoita in the foothills of the Huachuca Mountains) is in a very rural setting. I’m glad that (job opportunity) didn’t work out. I’m very glad to have been in Payson and have that experience and finish my career here.

GAZETTE: So there’s nothing that happened here or conditions here that made you do this sooner than you would have otherwise?

CASEY: No. Not here. We’re just fortunate both of our parents are alive and kicking and doing pretty well, but they’re also getting up there past their mid-80s. They live in the southern part of the state as well and we can spend some time with them.

GAZETTE: What advice would you give to your successor -- or cautions, or insights?

CASEY: I think he or she has a wonderful leadership team in place, a strong governing board, and of course great teachers and staff – to learn about those folks first prior to initiating a lot of changes because we’re going to be fiscally challenged in Arizona, and Payson will be no different for a few years still. It’s going to be trying to understand and appreciate the pressure that teachers are under, that school principals are under, and seek to continue to support them. For a superintendent to be successful it’s basically trying to support the principals and teachers by getting out of their way. There’s enough of that, I feel, that’s coming down from both the federal and the state level.

GAZETTE: So what about this trailer you bought?

CASEY: I understand you guys are vintage trailer aficionados?

GAZETTE: We hope to be one day.

CASEY: We hope to be one day too, but my wife has jumped right in because she was driving around Payson last year and saw a little 1952 12-foot trailer and the guy was willing to give it to her for $400 so now she’s looking at all these YouTube restoration videos. She wants it to be cute but not to make it a money pit. Now that we’re venturing into the state retirement system vs. the direct compensation system we have to be a little more careful. Fortunately, it’s pretty little so there’s not a lot you can do. This is a hobby sort of thing. Trust me, we’re not going to fix this up and hit the road.

GAZETTE: Sounds pretty cool. What make is it?

CASEY: It’s called a Jewel and there’s this guy in Germany who has a PhD in American vintage trailers and he’s collected all the manuals and advertisements. This Jewel was made for a couple of years and they’re long gone, but we do have some background on it.

GAZETTE: Besides the trailer, how do you see your life evolving?

CASEY: Part of our decision to retire now was so that we could do some things while we have, not just our health, but the stamina and energy to do some things that are a little more adventurous – and I don’t mean necessarily to climb Mt. Everest – but to travel and do a little hiking and biking. We said now is the time. I had a conversation with my dad who retired about my age and he said, “Once you hit 60, 80 comes at you like a train.”

GAZETTE: Well, good luck to you, and I understand that we’re planning to come over and see your trailer. And tell Priscilla if she ever finds another deal like this to let us know.

CASEY: Oh, absolutely. I don’t want to say it’s an addiction, but she has cruised the streets of Payson and Globe when she goes to see her folks (looking for vintage trailers). She goes and knocks on the door. So absolutely if we see something.

Arizona has second-worst traffic safety laws

2012-01-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

Jacqueline Gillan, president of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said her group’s report that said Arizona had the second-worst traffic laws in the nation should be “a call to action” for the state to pass tougher laws. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

By STEPHANIE SNYDER
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON _ Arizona got a failing grade Wednesday from a national highway safety group that said the state has adopted fewer than five of the 15 laws the group considers basic to traffic safety.

Only South Dakota ranked lower than Arizona in the ninth annual report from the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. It rated Arizona poorly for its failure to adopt strict laws on teen driving, seat belt and motorcycle helmet use, and distracted driving, among others.

Arizona has “some of the weakest laws and yet they’re surrounded by states that have better laws,” said Jacqueline Gillan, the group’s president. “This is really a call to action for Arizona to step up and start passing these laws.”

Her group said crashes killed more than 700 people in Arizona in 2010, at a cost estimated by state officials at $2.7 billion.

“It doesn’t make sense when you look at the economic cost and carnage on the Arizona highways that they are still ignoring some really effective public health interventions that could really bring down deaths and injuries and costs for the state,” Gillan said.

But state officials challenged the report, saying the laws it identified as crucial “aren’t going to help us.”

A report on the website of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety says traffic deaths in Arizona of unrestrained vehicle occupants, alcohol-impaired drivers, motorcyclists without helmets and teen drivers all fell from 2006-2009. This in a state that does not have the strict laws for enforcing seat-belt use, requiring motorcycle helmets and restricting teen drivers that the highway safety group says are needed.

“We are following what our indicators are and pushing to do safety programs to save and prevent tragedies,” said Alberto Gutier, director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety. “We don’t have to consult or react to anything the rest of the country does.”

Gutier said traffic deaths across the nation have fallen steadily in recent years. That trend is mirrored in Arizona, where the number of highway fatalities went from 1,293 in 2006 to 807 in 2009, according to both the state and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The number fell again to 762 in Arizona in 2010, according to the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety report.

Gutier and Gillan agreed that part of the decline has been driven by the poor economy, which made gas relatively more expensive and resulted in fewer drivers on the road.

But Gutier said there are other factors, noting that Arizona was one of five states to earn a five-star ranking from Mothers Against Drunk Driving in a report released in November. That ranking was based on drunken driving countermeasures, such as ignition interlocks and sobriety checkpoints.

“Law enforcement has done a fantastic job in Arizona,” of enforcing laws already on the books, Gutier said.

The report by Gillan’s group did score Arizona relatively well for its drunken driving laws, noting that the state had almost all of the recommended restrictions: a ban on open containers, a requirement for ignition-interlock devices for drunken drivers and stiffened penalties for drunken drivers who endanger children. The state only got half-credit for its law requiring blood-alcohol tests on drivers killed in crashes; the report prefers that those tests also be required on drivers who survive crashes in which someone is killed.

Gutier said his office plans to allocate the majority of its funding to preventing traffic fatalities.

“I’m questioning the whole ranking and the whole report,” he said.

Ray “Still Ray” Fitzgerald, chairman of the 7,000 members Arizona Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs, said it would be difficult for state lawmakers to require that all motorcyclists wear a helmet, which the report would prefer.

Fitzgerald, a motorcyclist of more than 40 years, said motorcycle-rights organizations like his support a “pro-choice” stance on helmets. The Prescott resident said he wears a helmet when it snows.

“I’m not against wearing helmets, I’m against being told that I have to,” Fitzgerald said.

Proposed APS rate increase may become decrease

2012-01-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

Thanks to pressure from consumer groups and low natural gas prices, a proposed 6.6 percent rate increase for APS has been derailed, and consumers may now see a 1 percent decrease this year if the Arizona Corporation Commission approves, according to a front page article in today's (Jan. 12) Arizona Republic. But don't get too excited, because a bunch of minor increases and adjustments are likely to increase your bill anyway.

If that sounds complicated, it is. But you can read the entire story for yourself by clicking on azcentral.com.

Also in today's Republic, a new survey indicates tensions between rich and poor are growing. In fact, the article reports that "Americans now see more social conflict over wealth inequality than over the hot-button topics of race relations and age," with 46 percent believing that "rich people are wealthy because they were fortunate enough to be born into money or to have the right connections." You can also read that story by clicking on azcentral.com.

And remember you can get these stories and much more with home delivery of the Republic by calling 1-800-332-6733. It's the kind of news you won't find in the local paper.

Humor experts want to hear your jokes...no joke

2012-01-11T08:29:00.000-08:00

Alleen and Don Nilsen are writing a new book about humor, and they want to hear from you.
Photo by: Bruce Matsunaga

By Judith Smith
Arizona State University

January 09, 2012 -Don and Alleen Nilsen are serious about this: They want to hear your jokes, particularly the ones you helped create.

“Now that we’ve retired from teaching at ASU, we want to write a book focusing on the changing nature of humor and how people are no longer happy to sit back and laugh when someone tells a ‘canned joke,’" the humor-loving couple said.

“Today, people want to participate in the creation of the humor they laugh at. We would love to hear examples or opinions from friends, colleagues, former students and anyone who enjoys a good laugh.”

The Nilsens, who both were professors in the English Department at Arizona State University, are co-founders of the International Society for Humor Studies, whose members are interested in “how humor varies from country to country, or according to vocation, age, region, ethnicity or other markers."

Don Nilsen offers these examples of the type of humor they are looking for:

Hot Potato:
“This is like the game children play when sitting in a circle and tossing a ball from one player to another pretending that it is too hot to keep. The idea is not to be caught with it when the whistle blows. With humor, someone starts a joke, then someone else in the crowd adds to it and so does someone else,” Nilsen said.

“For example,” Nilsen said, “when Alleen was a loaned executive to the Board of Regents, she remembers one of our universities proposing a program devoted to race horses. Even before everyone at the table had received their copy of the proposal, someone said ‘Whoa!’ This was followed by such other comments as, ‘Don’t let this one get out of the gate!’ and 'I wouldn’t bet on its success!’

“By the time more than half of those voting had added a joking comment, the fate of the proposal was sealed. Of course the regularly scheduled 20-minute discussion was held, followed by a vote in which the proposal was formally shelved. The announcement was made with the comment ‘Thank goodness, we won’t be saddled with this one.’"

The world’s longest running joke:
“Arizona has a law that an elected official cannot be impeached until having been in office for six months. When in 1986, Evan Meacham was elected Arizona’s governor, he received a plurality, but not a majority of the votes. Even before his inauguration people were joking about his controversial decisions and the inadvertent remarks he made. This went on for a full six months, after which he was impeached.

“Two books of Meacham jokes were published, and he was featured in several national news stories. Gary Trudeau, for example, devoted a weeklong comic strip to him. Can you tell us about other 'long-running' jokes – maybe in your family, high school, church or community?”

Internet humor:
“We think one of the reasons for the success of social networking (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and of the jokes (both written and in pictures) that viewers pass on to their friends, is that they invite participation.

“Have you adapted or helped create one of these jokes? What is the funniest incident you remember receiving?"

Participatory humor:
“Besides planning surprise parties, have you ever participated in other forms of creative, group humor, such as practical jokes, tricks or campaigns? If so, we would love to hear about them,” Nilsen said.

“Humor is a bonding thing,” the couple said, “and humor varies from culture to culture. In Japan, for example, there is no humor during working hours, and in the Navajo culture, humor is so integrated into their society that you can’t separate it.”

What happens when someone tells a joke?

Two concepts apply, Nilsen said – agenda and salience.

“Agenda” means that in order for a joke to be significant, it must matter to the audience. “Old people can relate to geriatric jokes; Hispanics can relate to Hispanic jokes, etc.,” Nilsen said. “But the problem here is when people might relate too much. Hardly anyone likes the feeling of being the target of the joke.’”

Alleen Nilsen added, “This might be explained by what author Max Shulman said, that if he writes a joke and the reader says ‘Ah ha! I know someone like that,’ the reader will laugh. But if he writes a joke that causes a reader to say, ‘Oh, no, that’s me!' then the reader won’t laugh.”

"Salience" means that a cartoonist, for example, looks at a person and decides which physical features are most salient – most significant – and then exaggerates those features, Nilsen explained. “That's why caricatures of Jay Leno always have a big chin – much bigger than his chin is in real life.”

The end of the joke is key, the Nilsens said. “A joke’s punch line requires you to reanalyze the joke. It’s an epiphany, a sudden insight. Humor gently pushes boundaries.”

Acceptable humor has to be humane, they added. “It should never target an attribute or weakness the person can’t change.”

With their new book, the Nilsens hope to “communicate the idea that humor is in every part of our life,” they said.

Anyone with an example of humor to contribute should send it to the Nilsens at don.nilsen@asu.edu.

Now, did you hear the one about the horse that goes into the bar?

Tonto's ORV plan a disaster for environment

2012-01-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

PHOENIX, Ariz.— The Tonto National Forest released a plan this week that would open an additional 1,441 miles of roads despite the fact that off-road vehicles have been identified as a major contributor to air- and water-quality problems in that forest and in Maricopa County. Many of the Tonto’s watersheds are already impaired or at risk for impairment, and roads are often in poor quality in damaged watersheds. The forest is home to 16 threatened and endangered species.

“The plan is a financial disaster as well as an environmental one — it’ll make poor-quality air and water around Phoenix even worse,” said Cyndi Tuell at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Forest Service included a simple list of the environmental problems associated with the plan. The list is 17 pages long and includes more than 63 species of plants and animals that will be hurt, including Mexican spotted owls, desert bald eagles and Chiricahua leopard frogs.

Financial data from the Forest Service show that the current road system of more than 4,200 miles of roads costs more than $6.9 million to maintain every year; but the forest receives just $1.6 million a year, on average. When roads are not properly maintained they deteriorate, cutting off public access to hiking and camping; adding roads in the face of a steadily decreasing budget is irrational.

“The Forest can only afford a couple hundred miles of roads,” said Tuell. “In this economy it’s flat-out irresponsible for the Forest Service to be adding a single mile — and now we hear more than 1,000 miles are going to be added for the benefit of ORVers? Taxpayers can’t foot that bill.”

The Tonto National Forest was created in 1905, primarily to protect the Salt and Verde river watersheds, which provide clean water to millions of Arizonans. The Forest Service has gone to great lengths to analyze the watershed around Phoenix to allow the agency to better manage roads and other projects on the landscape. Tuell questioned the Tonto’s plan to add to the already overburdened watersheds, putting not only wildlife but the people of Phoenix at risk.

“If the Forest Service refuses to use its own information to manage the forest properly, we’ll have to force it to do its job,” Tuell said.

Comments on the new plan are due Feb. 6. For a direct link to the documents, click here. Comments must be submitted to Gene Blankenbaker, forest supervisor at the Tonto National Forest Supervisor's Office, 2324 E. McDowell Road, Phoenix, AZ 85006, or on the internet using a comment form at https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/CommentInput?Project=28967, by phone at (602) 225-5200, by fax at (602) 225-5295, or by email at comments-southwestern-TMRTonto@fs.fed.us.

Comments may also be hand-delivered weekdays between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. at the Tonto National Forest Supervisor's Office, 2324 E. McDowell Road.

Donations allow Bleck to reach new home

2012-01-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

Bleck with his new dad.

Remember the brief story we recently ran about Bleck, a military working dog in need of a new home? Here's a follow-up:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR LIFE-CHANGING DONATIONS !!!

Military Working Dog Adoptions wishes to convey our heartfelt thanks to YOU for your donation to us!

Here are the wonderful things you enabled us to do in this last week:

** Retired MWD Bleck J219 was rehomed and flown from San Antonio, TX, to Las Vegas, Nevada on January 2, 2012, to live with his new ‘Dad’ who is a USAF Major.

** Retiring Contract Working Dog (CWD) Tosca was flown from San Antonio, TX to Ohio to join her US Marine Handler Danial Swafford. They were reunited around on January 7, 2012, at 7:30 pm CDT in Columbus, Ohio.

** Retired MWD Zito F469 was provided for after his sudden death on January 8, 2012, from complications caused during his years of military service. We we able to provide for the appropriate processing of this war hero’s remainsfor his adoptive family because of your kindness and generosity.

We thank you for being there for our Hero Military K-9s and for your generosity in this tough economy! We invite you to remember us when you can. Thank YOU for HELPING US HELP America’s HERO MWDs!! We really could NOT have done this WITHOUT YOUR KINDNESS!!!

With deepest appreciation,
Debbie Kandoll

Go to www.militaryworkingdogadoptions.com to help or for more information.

Duck! Your state legislature is back in session

2012-01-10T08:32:00.000-08:00

In today's (Jan. 10) Arizona Republic, columnists Laurie Roberts and E. J. Montini excoriate your Arizona State Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer.

The legislature is back in session and Roberts worries that the 386 bills passed in 100 days last year (including one to protect Happy Meals) will be easily eclipsed this season. "That's more than three new laws a day from this, the crew that craves limited government," she notes.

Montini, meanwhile, reflects on Brewer's State of the State Speech, in which she noted that "Arizona has been saved." He disses her praising herself for standing up to the federal government by asking a few "logic questions" like: "How is it that she believes SB1070 supersedes federal law at the same time that she believes federal law supersedes state law for medical marijuana?"

If you don't subscribe to the Republic, pick up a copy when you're in town today. You can also read Roberts' and Montini's columns by clicking news.azcentral.com. Just scroll down to "Voices."

But why not wake up to the Republic in your driveway seven days a week? Just call 1-800-332-6733 to subscribe. With great columnists, national sports, Safeway and Bashas' grocery ads, TV listings, hundreds of dollars in coupons and the big Sunday paper, it's an attractive alternative to a twice-a-week local paper chock full of court and police reports and the latest adventures of Kenny Evans - but not opposing political viewpoints.

A relative disaster

2012-01-09T08:53:00.000-08:00

LIFE'S OUTTAKES

By Daris Howard
Gazette Contributor

The church bulletin carried a notice for a genealogy class that was going to be offered in our local community. A friend of mine joked that I ought to take it to help me find out why I’m so nutty.

“Maybe you will learn that you have had squirrels in your family tree.”

“Very funny,” I replied.

But I must admit that the thought intrigued me. I have some old aunts that work on this kind of thing all of the time. They can tell me who my ancestors are back to somewhere around ten generations before Adam and Eve. But I had never done much with it myself, so I decided to give it a go.

When I arrived at the designated classroom, I saw rows and rows of computers. The instructor greeted me and told me to take a seat at any of them. I chose one that looked good, where I would also have an unobstructed view of the screen at the front.

As the other students filed in, I found I knew most of them. A neighbor took one of the seats next to me. She said it was her second time taking the class.

“Is it that hard?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she laughed. “It’s just that it allows me to use the commercial software for free.”

When the class finally started, the instructor showed us some things, and then let us try it on our own. Some, like my neighbor, were busily working away, not needing any instruction.

We had been asked to bring our family chart filled out as far back as we could. I had it done to my grandparents. It wasn’t long before I had all of the information for my great grandparents and was working my way back to my pioneer ancestors and their families.

While I was looking up material on them, I noticed that one of my 4th great uncles was one of my neighbor’s 4th great grandfathers.

“Wow, look at that!” I said to her. “We’re related.”

“Not really,” she replied. “The person you are looking at was not really my distant great grandfather. I am actually a descendant of the first husband.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, somewhat surprised. “His wife had more than one husband? I haven’t found anything on that.”

“That’s probably because our family doesn’t like to talk about him much.”

“Why?” I asked.

My neighbor smiled a sheepish smile and told me the story.

The lady’s first husband, John, decided to move his family to the Snake River Valley to homestead. As most families did, they built their cabin near the river where they would have ample water, as well as easy access to the wild game that used the river. But not long after he finished their cabin, other settlers reported problems with Indian activity in the area.

John expressed his concern as to whether they would be able to defend themselves if they were attacked. The local tribe was mostly located in the land farther south on the other side of the river, and he figured if they came, they would come from that direction. But near where their cabin was located, the river was wide and shallow.

“I’m not sure our old gun can fire clear across the river to stop them,” he told his wife. “I am going to go over there, and I will wave to you, and you fire the gun at me. I will let you know if I feel anything.”

“And that,” my neighbor told me, “is why she ended up needing another husband, and why no one talks too much about the first one.”

(Daris Howard, award-winning, syndicated columnist and playwright, is author of “Super Cowboy Rides” and can be contacted at daris@darishoward.com; or visit his website at http://www.darishoward.com)

Year's best books about the Southwest

2012-01-09T08:40:00.000-08:00

December 22, 2011 - She’s done it again. Patricia Etter, professor emeritus, Labriola Center at Arizona State University, has come up with another great list of the year’s best books about the Southwest.

This year, four books made the cut as Etter’s recommendations for “Southwest Books of the Year 2011” – books about an early expedition, a look at the Santa Fe Trail, one on wildlife, and another on wild horses of the Southwest.

Etter, one of six members of the Southwest Books of the Year panel sponsored by the Pima County Public Library, has been making her picks for the past 10 years.

Panel members start with a field of 212 titles, and each chooses up to six favorite books. Books selected by ore than one of the reviewers become “Top Picks.”

Books considered for inclusion in Southwest Books of the Year must be set in the Southwest, or deal with a Southwestern subject.

Etter’s picks for 2011 are:
• “In Search of Dominguez and Escalante: Photographing the 1776 Expedition Through the Southwest,” by Greg MacGregor and Siegfried Halus.

Synopsis: What would Francisco Dominguez and Silvestre Escalante think today if they saw a coal delivery train chug by their old campsite at the Utah-Colorado border, the pleasure boats on Lake Powell, a field of wind turbines or an auto traveling to Second Mesa on a paved road? Using Escalante’s journal, two photographers retraced the 1776 expedition through the Four Corners region and recorded the present-day condition of the expedition’s campsite.

• “Tracing the Santa Fe Trail: Today’s Views, Yesterday’s Voices,” by Ronald Dulle.

Synopsis: With this volume, readers can enjoy a vicarious journey of some 1,200 miles along the Santa Fe National Historic Trail between Old Franklin, Mo., and Santa Fe, N.M., and relive some of the excitement and drama of the commercial and trading enterprises of the 1800s. It all began when Mexico declared its independence from Spain, and William Becknell, Josiah Gregg and the Bent brothers opened communication with their trading expeditions.

• “Vanishing Circles: Portraits of Disappearing Wildlife of the Sonoran Desert Region,” by Linda M. Brew and Richard C. Brusca.

Synopsis: Sixty-seven works of art illustrate 93 endangered species found in seven Sonoran Desert habitats. The collection was commissioned and acquired for the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum by the Priscilla and Michael Baldwin Foundation. The splendid reproductions could be mistaken for photographs, and their artful descriptions make the book a sheer treasure.

• “Wild Horses of the West: History and Politics of America’s Mustangs,” by Edward De Steiguer.

Synopsis: Here is history on the hoof that traces the origins of the horse in America from prehistory to the present. Included are details of years of politics involving ranchers, farmers, environmentalists, hunters, and yes, even those who track and capture horses to turn into cat and dog food. First-rate maps trace the introduction and spread of the Spanish horses from the Caribbean through Mexico into the Southwest and ultimately North America.

The Southwest Books of the Year program has been in existence since 1977. All of each year’s titles are listed on the Pima County Public Library’s website library.pima.gov/books/swboy/.

Printed brochures are available on ASU’s Tempe campus at several locations, including the University Club, Emeritus College (lower level of Old Main) and the Labriola Center in Hayden Library. For more information contact Etter at patricia.etter@asu.edu.