Posts Tagged ‘arizona republic’

The Arizona Republic editorial board has opined in today’s editorial that Senate President Bob Burns did the right thing by dissolving the committee that was chaired by Senator Ron Gould because of his outspoken opposition to referring a sales tax increase to the ballot to deal with the mounting budget deficits facing Arizona.

That in and of itself was fairly unremarkable. The shocker was this line:

The sticking point for the special session is what else would be on the agenda. If lawmakers can agree on further spending cuts, they should do it now, so the reductions can be spread over more of the fiscal year.

Whoa! Stop the press! The Repblic’s editorial board thinks we should cut spending as soon as possible to spread the savings? We do live in strange times.

President Obama and his family are visiting the Grand Canyon on Sunday.  It just so happens that this weekend is one of the few that the Park Service waives entrance fees.

Coincidence?  I’m not so sure. This from the story in the Arizona Republic today:

Asked about the Obamas’ visit on a fee-free weekend, Eaker said it is sheer coincidence, then chuckled at a suggestion that the president’s family might be scrimping on its budget.

If you were planning a trip this Sunday, you might want to reconsider.  Having done advance work for a couple Presidential trips, I know how disruptive a visit from the Chief can be wherever he goes.

One thing I’ve noticed about Obama.  He doesn’t appear to care who he inconveniences when he wants to use the trappings of power to do something.  President’s Clinton and Bush both visited the Grand Canyon on non-weekends.  Maybe they didn’t consider when they were going, but then again, neither of them were as self-centered as the current President.  I mean, you didn’t ever have Clinton or Bush literally making the claim that they were “the One.”

You have to hand it to the editorial board of the Arizona Republic. When they get it right, they NAIL it.  Today’s editorial on the fantasy of Pelosi’s memory is a tour-de-force of what we call “taking the bark off” – that is, peeling away the façade and exposing the harsh, raw, ugly truth that is Nancy Pelosi’s brain.

Look at the preposterous mess that was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s press conference last week as a cold splash of water to the face.

To avoid so much as a hint of responsibility for her duties as a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Pelosi has humiliated herself.

The CIA lied to her, she said on Thursday. She was not told about waterboarding in her briefings. Nor, for that matter, was she told directly about CIA interrogators using any enhanced interrogation techniques.

She was never briefed, she says, but was “told” about them by a staff member. As if there is a lick of difference between those split hairs.

And she raised no objections to what she learned because she was too busy trying to gain a majority for her party in Congress.

No other member of Congress who was briefed on the CIA’s interrogation techniques over the years – and there were plenty of Pelosi’s fellow Democrats among them – has ever accused the CIA of distorting the record of its actions, much less outright lying. We are to believe they chose to lie to Pelosi alone.

***

Numerous leaders of both parties – including, reportedly, Pelosi – worried fretfully in those days that CIA interrogators may not have been doing enough to extract information.

They did not raise those concerns alone. Legal experts like Alan Dershowitz and writers like Newsweek magazine’s Jonathan Alter, among other politically liberal voices, urged harsh treatment to gain information. As Jacob Weisberg of the online Slate magazine noted this month, Alter even pushed for “transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies.” Rendition, in other words, to countries where torture is not such an issue.

Now, Speaker Pelosi is compelled to pretend she maintained a moral purity about those days. She never felt the urge to trade an inch of the moral high ground to protect Americans.

There is another word for the moral purity Pelosi maintained during those difficult days. It is the same word that applies to her CIA tales.

Fantasy.

DHS Secretary Napolitano has “apologized” to the American Legion for her the report by DHS that warned of various conservatives being potential terrorists.

The Saturday edition of the Arizona Republic covers the heat that Napolitano has taken for this report and a variety of clumsy moves.  Reporter Dennis Wagner called me yesterday to get my take.  I told him that I didn’t think she would resign or get fired, and that I was disturbed by her willingness to call conservatives “terrorists” while at the same time refusing to call members of Al-Queda terrorists – or to even use the words terror or terrorism.  That, I said, made me question her understanding of the true threats we face from actual terrorists.

Wagner didn’t use my central thesis, but instead some side comment.  Of course, I’m not surprised.

Still, Sean Noble, a Republican political consultant and blogger, said Napolitano’s mistakes are stunning because of her background and her position in the Obama administration.

“If she’s surprised by the criticism, then she wasn’t thinking about the level of responsibility that she has,” he said. “There is partisanship, you bet. But that’s how the game is played.”

The problem with that quote is that it’s taken out of context, and implies that I think this is all a game.  National security is not a game.  Napolitano is facing severe criticism because people are worried about her judgment. And I remain concerned.

This story covers a statement released by Congressman Shadegg.  He and I have not talked about this issue, so I was a little surprised at how similar our thinking was on this.

The Sunday edition of the Arizona Republic runs a regular section called “Plugged In.”  This Sunday’s edition runs a comment from me:

Let U.S. always remember terrorism remains a threat

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refused to use the words “terror” or “terrorism” in her inaugural appearance before Congress. That is very disturbing. Terrorism remains our most immediate national security threat, and DHS was created specifically to coordinate our responses to terrorism. Downplaying those threats is dangerous and irresponsible.

Sean Noble

Public-policy consultant

The wailing and gnashing of teeth is starting to get louder.  And that’s because the real pain of the budget crisis is just starting to be felt.  As I warned on Thursday, DES announced yesterday that 620 jobs will be cut, and that there will be more to come later.  Arizona Republic columnist, Laurie Roberts had a shrill piece which completely ignores how we got into this budget mess and instead tries to hang it all on the current Governor, Jan Brewer.

The Republic also ran a story about Arizona’s Department of Revenue getting ready to lay off about 200 workers next week, on top of the 53 they have already cut.

Folks, this is what happens when government spending increases at too fast a pace.  Growth of state spending grew more than 10 percent each year for the last four years or more, and when revenues are down as much as they are, real cuts have to take place.  Taxpayers are right to ask why Napolitano was growing government at about 3 times the rate of personal income – the inequity leads to real consequences.

The Republic would do itself a favor by at least acknowledging that Napolitano’s unhinged spending binge is a huge part of the problem.  If they keep looking the other way, their credibility, or what’s left of it, will suffer even more.

The Arizona Republic Sunday editorial calls on Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to “lead the way to make sure Arizona gets its fair share” of stimulus money.  They write that the “stimulus package is an enormous one-time opportunity for Arizona.”

To view the stimulus as a bailout ignores the fundamental problem with the state budget deficit.  It was created by a spending binge led by former Governor Janet Napolitano, and trying to paper over the problem with federal money will not fix our problem in the long term.  Most of the spending Napolitano pushed was for new or expanded programs.  The only way to long term financial solvency for the state is to scale back these programs, not just gloss over them with a “one-time opportunity.”  It’s like putting a bandage on a nail through the thumb, but not removing the nail.

It’s deeply disappointing that the Republic editorial board has become so short sighted, and so forgetful of how we got into this mess in the first place.

No, I’m not talking about my blog… but it could work.

The Sunday edition of the Arizona Republic devoted a front page, top of the fold, huge headline story to the inaugural run of “light rail” in the Valley of the Sun.  An estimated 90,000 people showed up for the free ride.  The article was typical “isn’t this great!” hype, but there were a few nuggets that made me crack a smile. 

“I was trying to beat the crowd, of course there’s no crowd,” was a comment by a guy who showed up at 6:00 a.m. to stand alone for nearly three hours waiting for his free ride.

Or this lady, “We’re just riding to Tempe, Mill Avenue, for lunch and riding back. And then we can say we did it.”  That doesn’t sound like somone planning to do it again.

Of the 90,000 people that officials say rode the rail on opening day, it will interesting to watch what the average ridership is when the novelty wears off and it starts costing money to get on the train.