Tucson Choices

With the Republican and Democrat nominating conventions wrapped up, there is one inevitable campaign theme that will begin coming to the forefront.

Like those old Miller beer ads arguing the preeminence of “Great Taste!” vs “Less Filling!”, the voting public will again be Read More

Please see here for a very complete account of the grading policy story at Pueblo High School. Board member Dr. Mark Stegeman (UA economics professor) appears to have come to similar conclusions as my prior post. Read More

One of my father’s favorite quotes is from Woody Allen. I’ve heard it a couple ways but he always related it as “90% of life is just showing up.”

The older I’ve gotten the more I have come to find this an astoundingly important and fascinating insight. It (rather unexpectedly) says that doing the minimum or close to it is really a big deal in most of life.

In my firm I write insurance contracts for clients. What my client is looking for, and what they will pay me to do, is fill out forms and file them with insurance companies. There is a lot more that we do in addition to this, policy Read More

As we start debating the re-authorization of our state’s 1 cent sales tax I would like to pause for a moment and take a slightly closer look at what has been, and will undoubtably be again, one of the oft heard sentiments in these discussions.

You almost certainly have heard some version of it, but Paul Krugman (writing in his recent release A Manifesto For Economic Sense) provides a good example: “There must of course be a medium-term plan for reducing the government deficit. But if this is too front-loaded it can easily be self-defeating by aborting the recovery.”

So more or less, “Yes, Read More

In 1689 John Locke published Two Treatises of Government. Within those pages he detailed a theory of Natural Rights. Rights which are Man’s from birth, Rights which are not bestowed by government but which are to be secured and protected by governments established by Man. Those Rights he summed up as, “Life, Liberty and Estate”. Our forerunners in the 1st Continental Congress restated these in the Declaration of Colonial Rights as “life, liberty and property”.

These ideas of Natural Rights, Rights “endowed by their Creator”, are the cornerstone of the Declaration we celebrated this Read More

High school graduate Jesse Kelly defeated a Harvard educated Air Force pilot, a nice American named Dave Sitton and Frank “Spank me, I’m bad” Antenori. Now that the fat lady has sung and the primary is over it’s time for Act II of “The Barber of Civility”: A contest between the guy who looks like the Jurassic Park professor without the pith helmet and a carpet bagging gun-toting Bible thumping gosh and shucks Gomer Pyle who can channel Sean Hannity.

Jesse will do great among the unwashed, the rural, the illiterate, the scared goobers willing to cheerfully vote against Read More

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Don’t worry, be happy … in Tucson?

Cityscape of Tucson downtown against mountain range, Arizona.

By Rob Lovitt, msnbc.com contributor

Is winter giving you a bad case of the blues? If so, perhaps you should go to your happy place, which might just be Tucson, Ariz.

In a new study, “The Old Pueblo” topped a list of the 10 happiest winter travel destinations in the U.S. It was joined, in descending order, by:
•St. Petersburg, Fla.
•Charleston, S.C.
•Napa-Sonoma, Calif.
•Seattle
•Los Angeles
•Palm Springs, Read More

PHOENIX – Saying the Pima County administrator needs to be restrained, a House panel voted Thursday to create a special committee to oversee county bond elections.
The party-line vote in the Republican-controlled Committee on Technology and Infrastructure came after a plea from Marana Town Attorney Frank Cassidy, who said the county has created a “culture of intimidation.”
He said part of that is because County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry proposes bond elections with more than 100 individual projects – and sub-projects within them – Read More

http://www.nbc-2.com/story/16662854/2012/02/02/nbc2-investigates-voter-fraud

County supervisors of elections tell me they have no way to verify citizenship. Under the 1992 Motor Voter Law, they’re not required to ask for proof.

“We have no policing authority. We don’t have any way of bouncing that information off any other database that would give us that information,”

Anyone know a place like this? Read More