Rim Country Gazette

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).

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.

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.

(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)

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.

Here we go again; the art of redundancy

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

OUT TO PASTOR

By Rev. James L. Snyder
Gazette Contributor

Forgive me if I have said this before, but "Happy New Year." It may be the epitome of redundancy but I have given this greeting for 60 years and I mean it as sincerely this year as I have all the years preceding.

The first few years of my life, I had no teeth and so all I could say was "Goo-goo, daa-daa." It meant the same thing. This year I have all of my teeth but I am not certain how many more years.

The way we start life is the way we usually end life, with no teeth and drooling all the time with a silly grin on our face.

Why is it so cute to have a toothless drool at three months but rather disgusting when you are 93 years old?

We all start life wearing diapers and if we live long enough we will end our life wearing the same apparatus. I guess it all depends upon what we do between the two events.

I suppose I could be guilty of not learning as much as I could at my age, but one thing I have learned and that is the good things in life are always repeated. Sure, there are some things that we do once in a lifetime and cherish their memories, but the good things in life are those things we continually repeat.

I would wager that in this New Year there would be relatively few, if any, new things. The past year was supposed to carry with it a lot of brand-new things. Most things were those repeated ad nausea for many years.

This year is an election year. Of course, the purpose of this year is to elect a new president. Every four years we elect a "new" president and I have participated in many presidential elections. At least, I went to the voting booth and voted. In all those years of electing a "new" president it has usually worked out that the new president was remarkably quite like the old president.

Some political pundits make a great deal between a Republican and a Democrat. It may be my age, but it seems to me that most Democrats are Republicans in disguise and most Republicans are Democrats in disguise. If I was backed up against a wall with a firing squad in front of me and asked to tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican, the only thing I could come up with would be the spelling.

A Republican when elected will always act like a Democrat and a Democrat when elected will usually act like a Republican. Then they wonder why the voting public is confused.

As far as I am concerned, a rattlesnake wearing a rabbit outfit does not change its nature. It still has poisonous fangs looking for some human flesh.

What has not changed is the fact that a politician running for office will say anything to get elected and then once elected will develop an acute sense of amnesia, which is not that cute.

Whenever I hear politicians say that when they are elected they are going to change things I know I am either listening to a fool or someone who is trying to fool me. Hundreds of politicians have run on the platform of changing Washington DC. Well, how has that been working?

The coming presidential election will be the same as every other one in the history of the United States.

In spite of that, there are a few things I am glad will not change.

The things that are really important in life are those things that do not change.

For instance, I am glad the sun comes up every morning. Even though every day is a new day, the same sun starts the day with its rising. The beautiful thing about this is that we can only live one day at a time. I cannot remember how much time I have spent worrying about something in the future and when that day came, I worried in vain.

I am so glad that the rising of the sun is not in the hands of some political committee somewhere. Wherever two or three politicians are gathered together, there is gridlock. If a political committee were responsible for the rising of the sun, it would never rise. The only thing a political committee can do when it comes to the phenomenon of rising is in the area of taxes and their salaries.

As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow so will our taxes and so will the salaries of the politicians. Would be great the politician’s salary was tied to the economy? If the economy was up, the politicians would get a raise. If the economy went down, the politicians would take a cut in salary.

I am not sure how to do that, but if it ever became law in our country, the economy of our country would be on the rise for generations to come.

Another redundancy that I am delighted to participate in and that is the mercies of God. "It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness" (Lamentations 3: 22-23 KJV).

Although repeated daily, God's mercies are never redundant.

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.

The ongoing decline of the public good

2012-01-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

By Robert Reich
Robert Reich's Blog
readersupportednews.org

05 January 12 - Meryl Streep's eery reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" brings to mind Thatcher's most famous quip, "there is no such thing as 'society.'" None of the dwindling herd of Republican candidates has quoted her yet but they might as well considering their unremitting bashing of everything public.

What defines a society is a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions - public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

Public institutions are supported by all taxpayers, and are available to all. If the tax system is progressive, those who better off (and who, presumably, have benefitted from many of these same public institutions) help pay for everyone else.

"Privatiize" means pay-for-it-yourself. The practical consequence of this in an economy whose wealth and income are now more concentrated than any time in 90 years is to make high-quality public goods available to fewer and fewer.

Much of what's called "public" is increasingly a private good paid for by users - ever-higher tolls on public highways and public bridges, higher tuitions at so-called public universities, higher admission fees at public parks and public museums.

Much of the rest of what's considered "public" has become so shoddy that those who can afford to find private alternatives. As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, they buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, they pay premium rates for private care.

Gated communities and office parks now come with their own manicured lawns and walkways, security guards, and backup power systems.

Why the decline of public institutions? The financial squeeze on government at all levels since 2008 explains only part of it. The slide really started more than three decades ago with so-called "tax revolts" by a middle class whose earnings had stopped advancing even though the economy continued to grow. Most families still wanted good public services and institutions but could no longer afford the tab.

From that time onward, almost all the gains from growth have gone to the top. But as the upper middle class and the rich began shifting to private institutions, they withdrew political support for public ones. In consequence, their marginal tax rates dropped - setting off a vicious cycle of diminishing revenues and deteriorating quality, spurring more flight from public institutions. Tax revenues from corporations also dropped as big companies went global - keeping their profits overseas and their tax bills to a minimum.

But that's not the whole story. America no longer values public goods as we did before.

The great expansion of public institutions in America began in the early years of 20th century when progressive reformers championed the idea that we all benefit from public goods. Excellent schools, roads, parks, playgrounds, and transit systems would knit the new industrial society together, create better citizens, and generate widespread prosperity. Education, for example, was less a personal investment than a public good - improving the entire community and ultimately the nation.

In subsequent decades - through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War - this logic was expanded upon. Strong public institutions were seen as bulwarks against, in turn, mass poverty, fascism, and then communism. The public good was palpable: We were very much a society bound together by mutual needs and common threats. (It was no coincidence that the greatest extensions of higher education after World War II were the GI Bill and the National Defense Education Act, and the largest public works project in history called the National Defense Interstate Highway Act.)

But in a post-Cold War America distended by global capital, distorted by concentrated income and wealth, undermined by unlimited campaign donations, and rocked by a wave of new immigrants easily cast by demagogues as "them," the notion of the public good has faded. Not even Democrats any longer use the phrase "the public good." Public goods are now, at best, "public investments." Public institutions have morphed into "public-private partnerships;" or, for Republicans, simply "vouchers."

Mitt Romney's speaks derisively of what he terms the Democrats' "entitlement" society in contrast to his "opportunity" society. At least he still envisions a society. But he hasn't explained how ordinary Americans will be able to take advantage of good opportunities without good public schools, affordable higher education, good roads, and adequate health care.

His "entitlements" are mostly a mirage anyway. Medicare is the only entitlement growing faster than the GDP but that's because the costs of health care are growing faster than the economy, and any attempt to turn Medicare into a voucher - without either raising the voucher in tandem with those costs or somehow taming them - will just reduce the elderly's access to health care. Social Security, for its part, hasn't contributed to the budget deficit; it's had surpluses for years.

Other safety nets are in tatters. Unemployment insurance reaches just 40 percent of the jobless these days (largely because eligibility requires having had a steady full-time job for a number of years rather than, as with most people, a string of jobs or part-time work).

What could Mitt be talking about? Outside of defense, domestic discretionary spending is down sharply as a percent of the economy. Add in declines in state and local spending, and total public spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research has dropped from 12 percent of GDP in the 1970s to less than 3 percent by 2011.

Only in one respect is Romney right. America has created a whopping entitlement for the biggest Wall Street banks and their top executives - who, unlike most of the rest of us, are no longer allowed to fail. They can also borrow from the Fed at almost no cost, then lend the money out at 3 to 6 percent.

All told, Wall Street's entitlement is the biggest offered by the federal government, even though it doesn't show up in the budget. And it's not even a public good. It's just private gain.

We're losing public goods available to all, supported by the tax payments of all and especially the better off. In its place we have private goods available to the very rich, supported by the rest of us.

Even Lady Thatcher would have been appalled.

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.

Country star Billy Dean in Payson Thursday

2012-01-07T09:52:00.000-08:00

NASHVILLE, TN – (December 27, 2011) – Billy Dean, Nashville singer/songwriter and number-one smash recording artist will appear in a unique and intimate performance at the Payson High School Auditorium in Payson on Thursday, Jan. 12 at 7 p.m.

Billy Dean is an iconic Nashville star, with 12 albums and 11 top ten hits. Among the awards bestowed on Billy are The Academy of Country Music’s “New Male Vocalist” and “Song of the Year,” a GRAMMY award and the BMI “Million Air Plays Award.” Hit songs aside, Billy is most noted for his dynamic musicianship and vocal styling, and warm, genuine presence on and off stage.

Single tickets are $35 as available. Children and youth, grade 12 and under, will be admitted free when accompanied by a ticket holding adult. For more information visit the association website at www.tccarim.org or call 928-478-4363 or 928-474-4189.

To view a promotional video of this artist, please follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/liveonstageinc2011#p/u/26/l7rKT6kcm5Q

The Tonto Community Concert Association is committed to bringing quality entertainment to the Rim Country through an annual concert series and support of the fine arts in Payson schools. This series is intended as an enriching cultural experience for the people of Payson and those in surrounding communities.

Live On Stage, Inc. provides acclaimed, affordable entertainment attractions and support services to an American community of concert presenters. For more information, visit www.LiveOnStage.biz.

Tonto proposal would restrict motor vehicle use

2012-01-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Plan's public comment period begins

Phoenix (Jan. 6, 2012) –Tonto National Forest officials are seeking comments on the Travel Management Environmental Assessment (EA). The 30-day comment period begins January 6.

The action is a proposed system of roads, trails and areas. Based on previous public input, several alternatives are proposed in this draft Environmental Assessment (EA). The final product will be a Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM) that shows which roads and trails will be open to motor vehicle use. The decision will also amend the Tonto National Forest Plan.

In 2005, the Department of Agriculture enacted a new planning rule to manage motorized vehicle use on all national forests and grasslands. This rule requires the Tonto National Forest to designate those roads, trails, and areas that are open to motor vehicle use. Designations will be made by class of vehicle and, if appropriate, by time of year. The final rule will prohibit the use of motor vehicles off the designated system, as well as use of motor vehicles on routes and in areas that are not consistent with the designations.

“Public involvement at this time is a critical component in developing a motorized travel system,” stated Sharon Wallace, Public Services Group leader. “During this comment period, we are hoping to get representative viewpoints and suggestions from a cross-section of forest visitors.

“The purpose of the Motor Vehicle Use Map is to comply with the requirements of the Travel Management Rule, to reduce problems caused by uncontrolled off-road travel, and to improve the current system of travel routes for public access and enjoyment. The development of a Motor Vehicle Use Map is an adaptive process in which future changes can be made in the public interest.”

A copy of the travel management environmental assessment can be found at the forest web page at www.fs.usda.gov/Tonto under the Travel Management Plan link. Print or CD copies of the EA are available at the Forest Supervisor’s Office at 2324 E. McDowell Rd., Phoenix, Arizona, or one of six forest district offices.

Comments must be submitted within 30 days following date of the legal notice published in the Capitol Times on January 6, 2012. Please submit comments using one of the methods below (listed in order of preference for ease of processing through the content analysis process):

Internet (using a comment form): https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/CommentInput?Project=28967
Email: comments-southwestern-TMRTonto@fs.fed.us
Postal mail:

Travel Management Team Leader
Tonto National Forest
2324 E McDowell Rd.
Phoenix AZ, 85006

Phone: 602-225-5213

Comments will only be considered if a full name and a physical mailing address are included. Comments become part of the public record. If you have any questions concerning this process, please contact Genevieve Johnson at 602-225-5213, or by email at grjohnson@fs.fed.us

For more information about the program, please visit the Tonto National Forest webpage at www.fs.usda.gov/Tonto or call the Tonto National Forest Supervisor’s Office, (602) 225-5200.

Have the super-rich seceded from the U.S.?

2012-01-06T12:07:00.000-08:00

The rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their own fellow American citizens. (photo: File)

By Mike Lofgren
CounterPunch
readersupportednews.org

05 January 12 - It was in 1993, during congressional deliberation over the North American Free Trade Agreement. I was having lunch with a staffer for one of the rare Republican members of Congress who opposed the policy of so-called free trade. I distinctly remember something my colleague said: "The rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their own fellow American citizens."

That was just the beginning of the period when the realities of outsourced manufacturing, financialization of the economy, and growing income disparity started to seep into the public consciousness, so at the time it seemed like a striking and novel statement.

At the end of the cold war many writers predicted the decline of the traditional nation state. Some looked at the demise of the Soviet Union and foresaw the territorial state breaking up into statelets of different ethnic, religious, or economic compositions. This happened in the Balkans, former Czechoslovakia, and Sudan. Others, like Chuck Spinney, predicted a weakening of the state due to the rise of Fourth Generation Warfare, and the inability of national armies to adapt to it. The quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan lend credence to that theory. There have been hundreds of books about globalization and how it would break down borders. But I am unaware of a well-developed theory from that time about how the super-rich and the corporations they run would secede from the nation state.

I do not mean secession in terms of physical withdrawal from the territory of the state, although that happens occasionally. It means a withdrawal into enclaves, a sort of internal immigration, whereby the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well-being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension - and viable public transportation doesn't even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call, who cares about Medicare?

To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd; for example, their habit for centuries has been to send their offspring to private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by the plutocracy's palpable animosity towards public education and public educators, as Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated. To the extent public education "reform" is popular among billionaires and their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the more than one-half trillion dollars in federal, state, and local education dollars into private hands, meaning themselves and their friends. A century ago, at least we got some attractive public libraries out of Andrew Carnegie. Noblesse oblige like Carnegie's is presently lacking among our seceding plutocracy.

In both world wars, even a Harvard man or a New York socialite might know the weight of an army pack. Now the military is for suckers from the laboring classes whose subprime mortgages you just sliced into CDOs and sold to gullible investors in order to buy your second Bentley or rustle up the cash to employ Rod Stewart to perform at your birthday party. Courtesy of Matt Taibbi, we learn that the sentiment among the super-rich towards the rest of America is often one of contempt rather than noblesse; Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, says about the views of the 99 percent: "Who gives a crap about some imbecile?"

Steven Schwarzman, the hedge fund billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group who hired Rod Stewart for his $5-million birthday party, believes it is the rabble who are socially irresponsible. Speaking about low-income citizens who pay no income tax, he says: "You have to have skin in the game. I'm not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system." But millions of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes pay federal payroll taxes. These taxes are regressive, and the dirty little secret is that over the last several decades they have made up a greater and greater share of federal revenues. In 1950, payroll and other federal retirement contributions constituted 10.9 percent of all federal revenues; by 2007, the last "normal" economic year before federal revenues began falling, they made up 33.9 percent. By contrast, corporate income taxes were 26.4 percent of federal revenues in 1950; by 2007 they had fallen to 14.4 percent. Who has skin in the game now?

As is well known by now, Schwarzman benefits from the "Buffett Rule:" financial sharks typically take their compensation in the form of capital gains rather than salaries, thus knocking down their income tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. But that's not the only way Mr. Skin-in-the-Game benefits: the 6.2-percent Social Security tax and the 1.45-percent Medicare tax apply only to wages and salaries, not capital gains distributions. Accordingly, Schwarzman is stiffing the system in two ways: not only is his income tax rate less than half the top marginal rate, he is shorting the Social Security system that others of his billionaire colleagues like Pete Peterson say is unsustainable and needs to be cut.

This lack of skin in the game may explain why Willard Mitt Romney is so coy about releasing his income tax returns. It would also make sense for someone with $264 million in net worth to joke that he is "unemployed," as if he were some jobless sheet metal worker in Youngstown, when he is really saying in code that his income stream is not a salary subject to payroll deduction. The chances are good that his effective rate for both federal income and payroll taxes is lower than that of many a wage slave.

The real joke is on the rest of us. After the biggest financial meltdown in 80 years - a meltdown caused by the type of rogue financial manipulation that Romney embodies - and a consequent long, steep drop in the American standard of living, who is the putative front-runner for one of the only two parties allowed to be competitive in American politics? None other than Mitt Romney, the man who says corporations are people. Opposing him, or someone like him, will be the incumbent president, Barack Obama, who will raise up to a billion dollars to compete in the campaign. Much of that loot will come from the same corporations, hedge fund managers, merger and acquisition specialists, and leveraged buyout artists the president will denounce in pro forma fashion during the campaign.

The super-rich have seceded from America even as their grip on its control mechanisms has tightened.

Giant endangered condors gaining ground

2012-01-06T08:33:00.000-08:00

The endangered California condor population that now spans Arizona and Utah is celebrating a significant milestone this month: the 15th anniversary of the first release of the birds into Arizona after being gone from the area for nearly 100 years.

In December 1996, six condors were released from an acclimation pen atop the Vermilion Cliffs in northern Arizona. Today, the population consists of more than 70 birds that now also use Utah as part of their range.

"This milestone is a significant accomplishment for the reintroduction program and demonstrates what cooperative, adaptive conservation can do for wildlife,” says Eric Gardner, nongame branch chief for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “We would not have any condors flying over Arizona and Utah if it were not for the experimental, nonessential designation that allowed the project to begin. Now we have over 70 birds.”

Since reintroduction began, challenges have been identified in the program and adaptive management has been implemented to address issues like lead poisoning from spent ammunition and predation. Of 42 known mortalities, 19 birds have died from confirmed lead poisoning. The second leading cause of death is predation with 12 cases recorded.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department implemented a voluntary non-lead ammunition program in 2005 to hunters drawn for hunts in the condor’s core range. The free program has had voluntary participation rates of between 80 and 90 percent each of the past five years, demonstrating the willingness of hunters to play an active role in conservation and that voluntary programs can be successful.

To continue to address lead’s impact on condors, Utah implemented a non-lead program in 2010 to further conservation as the population of condors expands its habitat into southern Utah. Biologists expect to see a reduction in lead toxicity deaths once more Utah hunters begin to use non-lead ammunition in the field.

The Arizona-Utah condor population is classified as an experimental, non-essential population by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the 10(j) rule of the Endangered Species Act. This special rule provides The Peregrine Fund and Game and Fish with more flexibility to manage the population. The 10(j) rule allows the agencies the ability to handle, treat, transport and fit birds with radio transmitters, activities that would be much more difficult to carry out without the special designation. The 10(j) rule also provides that land management practices will not be restricted due to the presence of condors.

Condors are a long-lived species with low reproductive rates, making their population more slow-growing than most wildlife. While they can live up to 60 years in the wild, they do not sexually mature until six or seven years of age and only mate every other year.

The California condor has gone from only 22 birds left in the world in 1982 to nearly 400 today. The original 22 birds were captured in an effort to breed and save the species. Condors bred and raised in captivity are now periodically released at sites in California, Mexico and at the Vermilion Cliffs in Arizona.

The species was added to the federal endangered species list in 1967. The condor is the largest flying land bird in North America. The birds can weigh up to 26 pounds and have a wingspan of up to 9 1/2 feet.

The Arizona-Utah condor conservation effort is a joint project of many partners, including The Peregrine Fund, Arizona Game and Fish Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Kaibab National Forest, and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

For more information on condors and lead, visit www.azgfd.gov/condor.

A picture really is worth 1,000 words...

2012-01-06T08:17:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court's decision on corporate personhood has extended the reach of money in politics. (photo: DanVolper.com)
readersupportednews.org

Carpino performs live at Bootleg on First Friday

2012-01-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

Celebrate the New Year on Historic Main Street as the first street party of 2012 unfolds from 5-8 p.m. this Friday, Jan. 6.

While most stores, shops and galleries are open, Bootleg Alley Antiques & Art at 520 W. Main Street features John Carpino live by the fire pit and inside the store.

Add attending First Friday to your New Year's resolutions. It's a resolution that's fun to do and easy to keep.

Cordray appointment enhances bank supervision

2012-01-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

Standing Up for Consumers

Richard Cordray, President Barack Obama's choice to run the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is sworn in during his nomination hearing before the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg)

By John Cordray
Reader Supported News
www.readersupportednews.org

05 January 12 - Today, I was appointed by President Obama to serve as the first Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I am honored by this opportunity to continue my work on behalf of consumers. And I am energized by the responsibilities and challenges facing the Bureau.

The importance of this day has less to do with me personally and much more to do with you - and the millions of individuals and families across the country who access consumer financial markets every day to participate in our economy and to pursue their dreams and aspirations. That's because now, with a Director, the CFPB can exercise its full authorities - with respect to both banks and nonbanks - to help those markets operate fairly, transparently, and competitively.

Consumer finance is a big part of our economy - and it plays a large role in the daily life of almost every American. Few people spend their entire lives with so much wealth available to them that they never need to borrow money. Whether it is to pay the bills and meet their everyday needs, or to finance larger investments in their futures like an education or a home, most people find it necessary to use financial products to access credit.

Financial products can help make life better, but they can also make life harder. Most of us know at least someone - a parent or sibling or friend - who has money troubles. Sometimes, those troubles are caused by a tough break or just not having enough money to go around; other times, by a poor decision. But sometimes, those consumer money troubles arise out of problems in the consumer financial markets. I have seen senior citizens lose their life savings to scams and fraud. I have seen young adults start their lives with crushing student loan debt burdens that they cannot afford. I have seen families bankrupted, and thrown out of their homes, by complex mortgages with spiraling interest costs and monthly payments that were never clearly explained.

In its first six months, the CFPB has taken significant steps to make consumer financial markets more transparent so they work better for consumers and for responsible businesses. Our Know Before You Owe campaign has worked to improve disclosures and make the costs, risks, and benefits of financial transactions easier for consumers to understand. We have also launched our bank supervision program. CFPB examiners are now on the ground at the nation's largest financial institutions, reviewing documents and asking tough questions about how these banks are complying with consumer financial protection laws.

One difficulty we faced until now was that, without a director, we were unable to address all the problems we were created to tackle. In particular, we lacked the ability to supervise financial institutions other than big banks - like nonbank mortgage lenders and servicers, and payday lenders. Many of these institutions had no regular federal oversight in the run up to the financial crisis. They led a race to the bottom that pushed aside responsible businesses, including community banks and credit unions, and greatly harmed consumers.

I am pleased to say that we will now be able to exercise the full authorities granted to us under the law and begin to supervise these nonbanks. Standing up this program is a top priority for the CFPB. Over the coming weeks we'll be announcing more information about this program and how it will help to improve the consumer financial markets.

As we move forward, please let us know what you think. My colleagues and I are determined to deliver positive results for American consumers in all of our efforts. We want people to know what we are doing and we want to hear their reactions. We are confident that, with help and input from consumers and honest businesses, we can play an important role in safeguarding consumers, consumer financial markets, and the American economy.

GOP ticket 2012: Romney-Rubio

2012-01-04T09:15:00.000-08:00

By Robert Reich
Robert Reich's Blog
readersupportednews.org

03 January 12 - Since my New Year's prediction that Obama would select Hillary Clinton for his running mate in 2012 (and Joe Biden would become Secretary of State), I've been swamped by requests for my GOP prediction. Here goes.

You can forget the caucuses and early primaries. Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Republicans may be stupid but the GOP isn't about to commit suicide. The other candidates are all weighed down by enough baggage to keep a 747 on the tarmac indefinitely.

For his running mate, Romney will choose Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida. Why do I say this?

First, Romney will need a right-winger to calm and woo the Republican right. Tea Partiers are attracted to Rubio - an evangelical Christian committed to reducing taxes and shrinking government. Rubio's meteoric rise in the Florida House before coming to Congress was based on a string of conservative stances on state issues.

Rubio is also a proven campaigner, handily winning four House elections starting in 2002, and then beating popular incumbent Republican governor Charlie Crist in the 2010 Republican primary - with the help of Tea Partiers.

Moreover, he's only 40, thereby giving the GOP ticket some youthful vigor.

And he's Hispanic - a Cuban-American - at a time when the GOP needs to court the Hispanic vote.

Rubio's only baggage is the "son of exiles" controversy - his suggestion that his parents were refugees forced out of Cuba by Castro when in fact they moved to the United States before the Cuban revolution.

But this isn't the sort of slip that would keep him off the ticket. In fact, Romney has defended Rubio, saying "I think the world of Marco Rubio, support him entirely and think that the effort to try to smear him was unfortunate and bogus."

Finally, and most critically, Florida is a crucial swing state. Rubio would help deliver it.

So it will be Obama-Clinton versus Romney-Rubio.

And what's my prediction for Election Day? Obama-Clinton hands down.

I warn you, though. Political predictions, economic forecasts, and astrology differ in only one respect. Astrology has a fairly good record of being correct.

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.

Military working dog Bleck and others need homes

2012-01-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

This is retired Military Working Dog Bleck J219. Military Working Dog Adoptions, run by Debbie Kandoll, is working on getting this warrior to his forever home.

It isn't often that Debbie asks for help. This is one of those times. If you would like to help with a donation please go to: www.militaryworkingdogadoptions.com and to the PayPal link. Her address is on there as well, if you prefer mailing any donation.

Thanks for your consideration and feel free to pass this on to others. Even if enough is raised, any funds left over will help bring other retired canine heroes to their owners in those situations that arise. The Military Working Dog Adoption Act does not provide for transportation costs at this time.

Truth mistaken as elitist conspiracy is still truth

2012-01-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

COMMENTARY: GEORGE TEMPLETON

Que sera, sera. Whatever will be will be. The future’s not ours, to see.

COMING TO THE RIM

I came to the Rim in the late 70’s. I needed clean air and a place where I could think. I would arrive at night from the Valley to the sound of frogs croaking “bud visor.” Besides hummingbirds, I had bats, glow-bugs, slugs, and the ferns from Jurassic Park. Some creeks ran year round providing swimming pools for kids. At night with the windows open, one could hear them gurgling along with the whisper of wind in the pines and the rumble of thunder as monsoon storms stuck along the rim before climbing over it. Now storms often come from the North, feeding the ever-rising equatorial rain band, and bring cold drier air to the Rim Country. The ferns and the frogs are gone and the springs are temporary.

FIRE

It was three in the morning when a neighbor rapped on our bedroom window saying, “The Dude Fire is coming, better pack up and get ready to run”. We hiked up the hill at the end of the road and could see the flames advancing in the distance. It was not a good omen. On the radio they were announcing the progression of the fire which we began to plot on our topographical map. It was on a vector towards us. The next day was night because of the smoke, and it became apparent that the fire could not be stopped. We could have been goners, but God spared us. The fire veered to the West and ran up the slopes of the Rim instead of incinerating us. That fire started on a day when the airport was closed because the temperature in the valley was 122 degrees F, higher than the maximum rated operating temperature for aircraft.

In the late 90’s, drought and beetle infestation killed over 40 large mature ponderosa pine trees on my properties. Those widow makers had to be felled. There was tension in the moment when trees teetered in the breeze before falling and release when in the hands of the Lord, they fell. How to aim, trees hanging in nearby trees, and steep slopes where the logs must be carried up-hill were all lessons. Those trees are much bigger when they are on the ground. This all came to six 40 cubic yard dumpsters and enough wood to supply neighbors who would consider burning pine. But these were not the only trees that were dying. Ancient alligator juniper trees that were wider than I am tall were dying.

I knew that the Rodeo-Chedeski Fire was coming. The radio said that I would be toast at 500,000 acres! I couldn’t stand just watching the fire. I busied myself cleaning up around the property. It is better to be doing something even if it is in vain. The fire was burning up-hill, in the canyons, crowning, and advancing faster than a VW Beatle could go. The last day the fire burned 270 degrees of angle all around us. It was even greater than nuclear war and volcanic eruption combined. The air war on the fire filled the sky with helicopters, 1, 2, and 4 engine bombers, about every 5 minutes from dawn to dusk for two days. They were slurry bombing on my side of the hill. Could this be global warming?

Even bigger, the Wallow Fire burned in the East. I have to admit the weather did not seem any warmer to me. The environment was far more fragile than I imagined it to be. Things in the Rim Country had changed in a big way and it was no hoax. You can mistake the truth as an elitist conspiracy, but the truth does not go away.

KEYSTONE

C-span aired the recent House hearing on the Keystone pipeline. It was nothing more than window dressing and anti-Obama political maneuvering. It was not to inform. We need more than the story according to those who have financial interests. The subject of climate change did not even come up. Where were the scientists?

According to Senator Kyl, the pipeline will provide 343,000 U.S. jobs. According to the State Department (and they support the pipeline), it will require 5,000 to 6000 workers for 3 years in six Republican states. The independent Cornell XL report claims 2,500 to 4650 construction jobs and $3 to $4 billion spent in the U.S. in comparison to the $7 billion claimed by TransCanada.

The pipeline, supplying only 5% of USA petroleum needs, will not give us independence from imports. However, its one million barrels per day capacity represents a threat to the giant Ogallala Aquifer that spans eight states and supplies water for two million people and $20 billion in agriculture. TransCanada’s existing Keystone I pipeline leaked 14 times in its first year of operation. Last May an existing pipeline carrying toxic tar sands had to be shut down for repairs after springing leaks in North Dakota and Kansas. The pipeline will cross an active seismic zone that had a 4.3 magnitude earthquake in 2002.

By itself, the pipeline will not be a major contributor to greenhouse gases. Expansion of dirty, expensive oil, while not having a plan for clean energy, demonstrates a lack of stewardship. The fact that third world development will increase pollution does not give America license to do the same. Worse yet, our Gulf refineries will export oil, establishing us as a world leader in dirty energy. Difficult oil such as tar sand, oil shale, and bituminous schist, deliver half as much energy as conventional crude for each unit of energy used to harvest them. Aggressive oil recovery techniques, some still experimental, result in up to 3 times more carbon dioxide than with conventional oil harvesting. It is not just Canadian oil. Oil remains a non-renewable resource that at the most will last for another hundred years or so. Sadly, oil has a history of politics attempting to control countries. Scraping the bottom for every last drop of oil testifies to our fossil fuel addiction and short-term outlook. We need to use our remaining oil sparingly and responsibly, with consideration for environment and climate.

SURVIVAL OF THE FATTEST

Free enterprise and the level competitive playing field in the energy industry are mythical. Fossil fuels receive billions in permanent subsidies and long-term tax incentives while renewable energy funding is tiny, short-term, sporadic, and discourages private investment. There is no doubt that we need oil independence from the Middle East, but we also need the Earth. What is our plan for climate change? Republicans claim that President Obama’s infra-structure jobs are not real because they are temporary. Isn’t this also true for pipeline construction? The American people deserve a vote on the pipeline as a separate issue (or perhaps as part of a policy including climate change and sustainability) not combined with payroll taxes. It has been all about winning. Tea-Party Republicans are for destroying Obama regardless of the consequences.

SOLYNDRA

America cannot compete with China in the manufacture of high-volume solar cells. China made a thirty billion dollar bet on that. The Republicans conducted the failed Solyndra witch hunt in hopes of finding some quid pro quo to use against President Obama. It’s not just Solyndra that is in trouble. Chinese dumping of solar panels at below their cost have led to talk about tariffs and a trade war. We need a “win-win” strategy. Chinese solar energy posted massive third quarter losses. The price of solar panels fell by 70 percent in the last two and a half years and that is good news for climate change and American jobs. The Federal 1603 tax incentive expires soon and that is bad news unless you advocate Darwinian Capitalism. By our waiting too long, we made it easy for China. We are mistaken when we think that free enterprise works on an international scale.

DURBAN

The third world does not have the liability of an aging infrastructure. So when they build their future they use the latest technology. There is no past to hold them back.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol set voluntary limits for greenhouse gas emissions that were never accepted by the USA. Canada’s Environmental Minister claims that the biggest mistake their previous liberal administration made was to sign up. At that time global carbon dioxide was increasing at the rate of 1.1 percent per year. The rate more than tripled in following years. It jumped almost 6 percent in 2010.

The Durban international climate conference awarded Canada 2 of 3 “fossil” demerits for polluting. There was an agreement to determine legally binding constraints by 2015 that will become effective in 2020. California isn’t waiting. Their bill AB32 places constraints on large polluting refineries that operate there. Contrary to big oil’s claims, California has 500,000 clean energy jobs, and that sector is growing ten times faster than the rest of the state’s economy.

FINANCE

It’s not just the wealthy who should carry their fair share of building the future. Small business won’t succeed without the help of big business and government. Technology that can change the lifestyle of every human being on the earth is a good investment! The funding for the new creation must come from the old, just as transistor technology funded integrated circuits and integrated circuits funded computer chips.

Big clearance in progress at Library bookstore

2012-01-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

During the month of January the Library Friends of Payson Bookstore is featuring a storewide clearance sale. All paperback and hardback books will be offered at two for the price of one. Videos will be 50 cents or 2 for $1.00.

Hurry in to take full advantage of these incredible bargains. It’s a great way to ensure that you have plenty of reading and viewing material for the cold months of winter yet to come. What better way to spend those frosty days than curled up with a good book or movie and something warm to drink!

The Bookstore constantly receives high quality donations. Volunteers place these books on the shelves as quickly as possible. Therefore, the wise patron will stop by frequently during January.

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

12 hopeful trends to build on in 2012

2012-01-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

By Sarah van Gelder
Executive Editor
YES magazine
info@nationofchange.org

Who would have thought that some young people camped out in lower Manhattan with cardboard signs, a few sharpies, some donated pizza, and a bunch of smart phones could change so much?

The viral spread of the Occupy Movement took everyone by surprise. Last summer, politicians and the media were fixated on the debt ceiling, and everyone seemed to forget that we were in the midst of an economic meltdown—everyone except the 99 percent who were experiencing it.

Today, people ranging from Ben Bernake, chair of the Federal Reserve, to filmmaker Michael Moore are expressing sympathy for the Occupy Movement and concern for those losing homes, retirement savings, access to health care, and hope of ever finding a job.

This uprising is the biggest reason for hope in 2012. The following are 12 ways the Occupy Movement and other major trends of 2011 offer a foundation for a transformative 2012.

1. Americans rediscover their political self-respect. In 2011, members of the 99 percent began camping out in New York's Zuccotti Park, launching a movement that quickly spread across the country. Students at U.C. Davis sat nonviolently through a pepper spray assault, Oaklanders shut down the city with a general strike, and Clevelanders saved a family from eviction. Occupiers opened their encampments to all and fed all who showed up, including many homeless people. Thousands moved their accounts from corporate banks to community banks and credit unions, and people everywhere created their own media with smart phones and laptops. The Occupy Movement built on the Arab Spring, occupations in Europe, and on the uprising, early in 2011, in Wisconsin, where people occupied the state capitol in an attempt to block major cuts in public workers' rights and compensation. Police crackdowns couldn't crush the surge of political self-respect experienced by millions of Americans.

After the winter weather subsides, look for the blossoming of an American Spring.

2. Economic myths get debunked. Americans now understand that hard work and playing by the rules don't mean you'll get ahead. They know that Wall Street financiers are not working for their interests. Global capitalism is not lifting all boats. As this mythology crumbled, the reality became inescapable: The United States is not broke. The 1 percent have rigged the system to capture a larger and larger share of the world's wealth and power, while the middle class and poor face unemployment, soaring student debt burdens, homelessness, exclusion from the medical system, and the disappearance of retirement savings. Austerity budgets just sharpen the pain, as the safety net frays and public benefits, from schools to safe bridges, fail. The European debt crisis is front and center today, but other crises will likely follow. Just as the legitimacy of apartheid began to fall apart long before the system actually fell, today, the legitimacy of corporate power and Wall Street dominance is disintegrating.

The new-found clarity about the damage that results from a system dominated by Wall Street will further energize calls for regulation and the rule of law, and fuel the search for economic alternatives.

3. Divisions among people are coming down. Middle-class college students camped out alongside homeless occupiers. People of color and white people created new ways to work together. Unions joined with occupiers. In some places, Tea Partiers and occupiers discovered common purposes. Nationwide, anti-immigrant rhetoric backfired.

Tremendous energy is released when isolated people discover one another; look for more unexpected alliances.

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4. Alternatives are blossoming. As it becomes clear that neither corporate CEOs nor national political leaders have solutions to today's deep crises, thousands of grassroots-led innovations are taking hold. Community land trusts, farmers markets, local currencies and time banking, micro-energy installations, shared cars and bicycles, cooperatively owned businesses are among the innovations that give people the means to live well on less and build community. And the Occupy Movement, which is often called "leaderless," is actually full of emerging leaders who are building the skills and connections to shake things up for decades to come. This widespread leadership, coupled with the growing repertoire of grassroots innovations, sets the stage for a renaissance of creative rebuilding.

5. Popular pressure halted the Keystone KL Pipeline — for the moment. Thousands of people stood up to efforts by some of the world's most powerful energy companies and convinced the Obama administration to postpone approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have sped the extraction and export of dirty tar sands oil. James Hansen says, "If the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over" for the planet. Just a year ago, few had heard of this project, much less considered risking arrest to stop it, as thousands did outside the White House in 2011.

With Congress forcing him to act within 60 days, President Obama will be under enormous pressure from both Big Oil and pipeline opponents. It will be among the key tests of his presidency.

6. Climate responses move forward despite federal inaction. Throughout the United States, state and local governments are taking action where the federal government has failed. California's new climate cap-and-trade law will take effect in 2012. College students are pressing campus administrators to quit using coal-fired sources of electricity. Elsewhere, Europe is limiting climate pollution from air travel, Australia has enacted a national carbon tax, and there is a global initiative underway to recognize the rights of Mother Nature. Climate talks in Durban, South African, arrived at a conclusion that, while far short of what is needed, at least keeps the process alive. Despite corporate-funded climate change deniers, most people know climate change is real and dangerous; expect to see many more protests, legislation, and new businesses focused on reducing carbon emissions in 2012.

7. There's a new focus on cleaning up elections. The Supreme Court's "Citizens United decision," which lifted limits on corporate campaign contributions, is opposed by a large majority of Americans. This year saw a growing national movement to get money out of politics; cities from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles are passing resolutions calling for an end to corporate personhood. Constitutional amendments have been introduced. And efforts are in the works to push back against voter suppression policies that especially discourage voting among people of color, low-income people, and students, all of whom tend to vote Democratic.

Watch for increased questioning of the legal basis of corporations, which "we the people" created, but which now facilitate lawlessness and increasing concentrations of wealth and power.

8. Local government is taking action. City and state governments are moving forward, even as Washington, D.C., remains gridlocked, even as budgets are stretched thin. Towns in Pennsylvania, New York, and elsewhere are seeking to prohibit "fracking" to extract natural gas, and while they're at it, declaring that corporations do not have the constitutional rights of people. Cities are banning plastic bags, linking up local food systems, encouraging bicycling and walking, cleaning up brown fields, and turning garbage and wasted energy into opportunity. In part because of the housing market disaster, people are less able to pick up and move.

Look for increased rootedness, whether voluntary or not, along with increased focus on local efforts to build community solutions.

9. Dams are coming down. Two dams that block passage of salmon up the Elwha River into the pristine Olympic National Park in Washington state are coming down. After decades of campaigning by Native tribes and environmentalists, the removal of the dams began in 2011.

The assumption that progress is built on "taming" and controlling nature is giving way to an understanding that human and ecological well-being are linked.

10. The United States ended the combat mission in Iraq. U.S. troops are home from Iraq at last. What remains is a U.S. embassy compound the size of the Vatican City, along with thousands of private contractors. Iraq and the region remain unstable.

Given the terrible cost in lives and treasure for what most Americans see as an unjustified war, look to greater skepticism of future U.S. invasions.

11. Breakthrough for single-payer health care. The state of Vermont took action to respond to the continuing health care crises, adopting, but not yet funding, a single-payer health care system similar to Canada's.

As soaring costs of health insurance drain the coffers of businesses and governments, other states may join Vermont at the forefront of efforts to establish a public health insurance system like Canada's.

12. Gay couples can get married. In 2011, New York state and the Suquamish Tribe in Washington state (home of the author of this piece) adopted gay marriage laws. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta won a raffle allowing her to be the first to kiss her partner upon return from 80 days at sea, the first such public display of gay affection since Don't Ask Don't Tell was expunged. The video and photos went viral.

2011 may be the year when opposition to gay marriage lost its power as a rallying cry for social conservatives. The tide has turned, and gay people will likely continue to win the same rights as straight people to marry.

With so much in play, 2012 will be an interesting year, even setting aside questions about "end times" and Mayan calendars. As the worldviews and institutions based on the dominance of the 1 percent are challenged, as the global economy frays, and as we run headlong into climate change and other ecological limits, one era is giving way to another. There are too many variable to predict what direction things will take. But our best hopes can be found in the rise of broad grassroots leadership, through the Occupy Movement, the Wisconsin uprising, the climate justice movement, and others, along with local, but interlinked, efforts to build local solutions everywhere. These efforts make it possible that 2012 will be a year of transformation and rebuilding — this time, with the well-being of all life front and center.

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful idea with practical actions. Sarah is YES! Magazine's co-founder and executive editor.

DARIS HOWARD: "We All Are Brothers"

2011-12-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

By Daris Howard
Gazette Contributor

The funeral director was finishing up the last preparations for John’s funeral when a group of men came in. There were more than 40 of them. What made the men stand out was that they were all about the same age, their hair tinged with silver.

The funeral director went to the first one. “May I help you, gentlemen?”

“Vee are ere for funeral of John Milton.”

“Are you relatives?”

“Yes. Vee, are his sons.”

The funeral director couldn’t hide his shock. “I thought John only had one son who had already passed away!”

“He have only one son is partially correct. But not all. Nor are ve all, for dere are many more.”

The man then went on to tell their story. He said that years ago, during World War II, many German prisoners of war had been brought to live in work camps in the United States. One camp was nearby. Farmers would contract with the government to have prisoners come and work on their farms at a pay rate of 80 cents per day.

With most of the men at war, John, who had lots of sugar beets, struggled to keep his farm running, so he contracted for prisoner help. Not long after they arrived, John noticed a group of them gathered in the corner of the beet field. He went to see what had drawn their attention.

John found the men gathered around a dead rabbit. “What are you doing?”

“Ve vere discussing how ve could take zee rabbit back to camp for food,” a prisoner said. He was quick to add, “Unless, of course, you vant to keep it.”

John looked around the group of men. “Do you not get enough food in the camp?”

The man told him that rations were tight, and they were always hungry. Once he found out, John set about to do something. He made sure the men who worked for him had good meals. He had them gather the beet tops, and they took them to the camp to cook up for greens. Instead of selling his surplus milk, he delivered it there at no charge. He planted every available acre he could into potatoes and took the harvest to the camp, getting other farmers to donate as well. When men became sick, John acquired permission to take them into his own home where he and his family nursed them back to health. Because of his kindness, the men clamored to be chosen to work at his farm, and they worked hard for him.

One day, one of the men asked John why he did so much for them. John told them that his only son was missing in action and had been presumed captured during the Battle of the Bulge in Germany. “I hope that they are taking care of my son as I am taking care of you. And,” he added, “until he comes home, you will have to be my sons in his stead.”

Then one day, the men watched as a military vehicle approached the house. John was called in and was gone a long time. When he did return, his eyes were red and swollen. One of the men asked him what was wrong. Choking on his words, he told them the army had liberated the camp where his son had been held prisoner, only to find out that his son, along with many others, had died of starvation.

The men were quiet for some time. Finally one asked, “You no longer vant us as sons?”

John could not control his emotions as he spoke. “Quite the opposite. Now that my son is never coming home, you will all have to be my sons forever.”

That day, in the middle of a beet field, men from opposites sides of a war shared love and compassion as John showed them that no matter who we are, whatever our background or difference, we are all still brothers.

The old German gentleman smiled at the funeral director. “So, you see, ve are his sons.”

That day, as the funeral director looked at the family section overflowing out the chapel doors, he knew John would be pleased that some of his sons had come home to honor him.

(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)

If you can't resolve mistakes, perfect them in 2012

2011-12-31T14:46:00.000-08:00

OUT TO PASTOR

By Rev. James L. Snyder
Gazette Contributor

An old year is fading and a new year is upon us again. Each year I go kicking and screaming into the New Year, and not because I am against change. My pants pocket is full of change.

I simply cannot remember to change the year on the checks I write until May. By the time, I remember the correct year I have forgotten to make deposits into my checking account. I need a reality check, which with any luck will not bounce as high as my checkbook.

That is not the only reason I hesitate going into a new year. The biggest reason has to do with the mistakes I made during the old year.

Looking back over the old year, I worry that my blunders were not as bad as they could have been. Did I make all the gaffes I possibly could? Did I fill my quota? What is my quota, anyway?

For many people, the New Year offers the opportunity to start over again. Actually, what happens is people simply make new mistakes curiously similar to the mistakes made during the old year.

If I have any resolution for the New Year it would be to perfect the mistakes I have already made. I do not see any sense in making new bloopers when I can easily requisition the old ones for duty during the New Year.

And what is wrong with my old mistakes? The only thing I can think of is that I did not work hard enough to make the most of them. It is one thing to make a mistake, but it is quite another thing to perfect the art of making a mistake so that you do not have to repeat it ever again. Too many amateurs have given mistake-making a bad name.

Most of my mistakes have been so poorly discharged that in the coming New Year I will have to re-do many of them. And, frankly, I am tired of it all. I am anxious to move on to new areas of mistake making.

I am convinced there are faux pas to make that I have not dreamed of at this point in my life. Believe me, I have been dreaming. Actually, the gracious mistress of the Parsonage thinks they are all nightmares. However, my horsing around is not limited to the nighttime.

With that in mind, my resolution for the New Year is to make sure all mistakes I make (and there will be plenty, I assure you) will be as thorough as possible. I refuse to execute any mistake before its time.

Some mistakes take lots of time to fully mature, but when its time comes, I want to make sure each one is implemented as smoothly and as perfectly as possible.

If I am any judge of character, the majority of people will not make any new mistakes this coming New Year. Oh, they think they are making new mistakes but in reality, they are dusting off old ones and re-dating them for the current year. What a waste of time, in my opinion.

For those who take mistake-making seriously, allow me to offer some help to guide this pursuit in the coming New Year.

Look back over the old year and make a list of all of the mistakes you have made. If you are a husband, solicit help from your wife, who will be able to remember all of those mistakes you have forgotten. (Not to mention one or two you did not make.)

Go over each mistake on your list and determine if it needs repeating for the New Year. It does not make sense in doing new mistakes if you are not finished with the old ones. Nothing is more disheartening than a half-baked mistake.

For every mistake from the previous year not needing repeating, place a nice red star in front of it. That mistake can now go into your Hall of Blame, which you will never have to repeat again.

Of course, you will have some mistakes, even though they have been perfectly executed, that are well worth repeating. You know which ones they are. Don’t you?

Now look at all of those mistakes listed for repeating during the New Year. Prioritize them so you can begin the New Year with a good plan.

As you prioritize this list, think of ways in which you can improve on your mistakes over the past year. No satisfaction compares with doing something as good as you can. One man’s blunder is another man’s gaffe.

Everyone generates mistakes, which is healthy. What is unhealthy is thinking you have not made any mistakes, which is a mistake. Some people have the strange idea that they live a completely mistake free life.

A mistake well executed is a mistake never needing repeating. During the New Year, execute as many mistakes as your conscience will allow.

The Bible, an authority on mistakes, says this; “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10 KJV.)

The great hope we have is that there is no mistake bigger than God’s ability to forgive.

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.

Roundup cartoon a blasphemous outrage

2011-12-31T14:32:00.000-08:00

Happened to be petsitting last night at a house whose owner still takes the Roundup. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the editorial cartoon in Friday’s edition.

My friends, if you ever doubted the Roundup’s elitist bias, just take a look for yourself. Better yet, don’t bother. I’ll tell you what you’re missing.

The cartoon featured two panels. In the left was a caricature of Time magazine’s recent 2011 Person of the Year cover – the Protester, for Occupy Wall Street and all the other protests over the past 12 months that brought about the possibility of democracy and humanitarian change to the Arab world and elsewhere.

In the right panel, headlined “WHO IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN” was an illustration of an American soldier labeled “ALL-TIME PROTECTOR.” The absolute outrage came in the cutline below – “FOR THE FREEDOMS ENJOYED BY THE IDIOTS OF OCCUPY WALL STREET.”

And there you have it. If that cartoon alone doesn’t cause you to pick up the phone and cancel your subscription, you need to take a good, hard look inside your heart and your soul. Because the elitist values expressed therein are diametrically opposed to the Christian values so many of you profess, not to mention the principles upon which our great nation was founded.

The Roundup’s cartoon was provided by King Features Syndicate, a supplier that offers a variety of cartoons from all shades of the political spectrum. The Roundup could easily have chosen another. But that wouldn’t be in keeping with its obvious and longstanding elitist bias in favor of the one percent (to go with its pro-growth and its anti-Democrat biases).

You know me. I could go on. But instead, please allow me to wish you a Happy New Year filled with equal opportunities for all citizens to enjoy, once again, the American Dream. Here's to a healthy, prosperous, and constitutional 2012.

Jim Keyworth
Editor