Arizona's First Political Blog

E-mail Anonymous Mike at zonitics4-at-yahoo.com

By Anonymous Mike, pseudonymously.

 
Phoenix Parks and Investment

While I was at a social function the other night, I heard something from one of our more public-minded citizens that almost led me to throw my drink glass against the wall. Now of course I didn't because not only would I not be able to finish my portion of the brownest of the brown liquors that was in said glass but my wife might be upset at my antics. Now wife is the wisest of creatures because sure enough after I finished my bourbon I had calmed down to the point where I could think about what my fellow citizen said.

His comment was that a vote for yes on Phoenix's Proposition A which would extend the existing 0.1 cent sales tax for public parks would be an "investment" in our community. Now I have written before on the use and abuse of the term "investment" to justify public spending but I find the use here by many Prop A supporters to be especially infuriating.

First I have to say that I find Phoenix's parks and mountain preserves, which will be supported by Prop A, to be a great civic treasure. Not only are the mountain preserves with their central urban location a great visual landmark, but the hiking in them is superb. However the issue here is "invest" and not necessarily "support." I understand using sales tax monies to fund parks is a different form of investment than say in transportation or education where those enhanced programs are expected to provide in part some sort of an economic return but the focus here is on the methodology of investment and not the exact form of the return on investment.

If you as a private citizen were approached by someone looking for you to invest in their venture you will want to have some questions answered before you whip out the checkbook. If the person who approaches you has a brain, they probably will anticipate some of those questions ahead of time things like their track record in using capital for previous investments, assurances such as the use of custodians or auditors to ensure that your money will be going to where it should and not say the Grand Caymans.

So here are my questions regarding Prop A that I have yet to have answered.

1) Prop A involves an extension of a 10-year old sales tax that has generated somewhere on the order of $200 million. How has that $200 million been spent?

2) There is an official Parks and Preserve Initiative Oversight Committee that "was created to annually review the expenditures of the Phoenix Parks and Preserve Initiative Program for conformance to the September, 1999 Ballot." I have searched through the official city records online and cannot find any copies of the Committee's annual reviews or any discussion of them by either the City Council or the Parks Board. I would venture to guess that those reviews would provide alot of insight into how well that $200 million was monitored and spent so where are they?

3) The ballot language states that "Funds raised from this initiative shall only be used for Phoenix parks and preserves." However in a later paragraph the language states that funds will be used to "... add shaded pedestrian and bike paths throughout the city." I assume those paths will be along the side of or within city streets so how do those expenditures square with "...only be used for Phoenix parks and preserves"?

Now I have been accused of overly parsing language so you will be happy to know that I am ignoring a similar clause that the funds will be used to "...add recreation programs for youth to fight drugs, gangs, and crime."

However I love the term "for youth to fight..." It's like the City will be creating a junior association of the Justice League where kids will be organized to fight the bad guys. I cannot wait to tell my 8 year old to get out his Ninja costume from last Halloween and report to the local park so he can go fight the Crips and Wedgewood Chicanos.

You didn't see it that way? Oh come one... have a few drinks and then go look again.

4) Look at the front page of the today's Phoenix section of the Arizona Republic. All three stories deal with either Prop A or the fact that the City is cutting youth recreation programs, the very programs that Prop A will support. Keep in mind that when a government entity cuts one program, it is implicitly deciding to spare another program either deeper cuts or any cuts at all. If Phoenix is cutting Parks & Recreation, that means somebody is being spared deeper cuts.

So this brings up the question of displacement. Yes Phoenix is in a deep budget crisis but the conventional wisdom is that good fiscal times will return and the opportunity will come to restore the youth recreation programs. Will the City restore the cuts out of general revenues or will consider them restored by Prop A?

5) Why is the program being extended for another 30 years instead of for another10? Wouldn't there be better oversight if the issue is returned to the voters on a more frequent basis.

Keep in mind that the answers to questions 1 and 2 are already available in some format. Somewhere, someone has copies of the annual reviews produced by the Oversight Committee. Also someone (presumably the Oversight Committee) has the numbers in some format of what has been raised by the sales tax and what it has been used on. Yet it is only publicaly available in the sense that I drive down to the City during business hours and request them.

Hmmmmm
posted by Anonymous Mike at 10:50 AM

 
The Perils of Parentage

When I was single, every weekend phone call was an invitation to some form of recreation, some episodes of which cannot be spoken to this day without dragging the name of some respectable citizen (or damsel) through the mud.

However when you are married, it is more than likely that such calls provide nothing but bitter disappointment. Take this past weekend...

The cell phone rings, you note on the caller ID that it might be smartest man concerning beer you would ever know. He's in town and invites you to meet with him at the local brewpub in 30 minutes. You know that not only will good conversation and hilarity ensue but that you will leave the pub full of good beer and quite a bit smarter than when you entered. However there is one glitch....

You are 20 miles across town and your son is at his best friend's birthday party which has another 1 1/2 hours to run. You look to your left, you look to your right, and then you look at your boy having the time of his life. You tell your friend you must sadly decline.

A few hours later you enter said brewpub and your friend is long gone. You and your son belly up to the bar and after each of you have had several beers, or in the little guy's case root beers, you realize that you'll never be to explain to him why some people find NASCAR interesting.

You leave the bar full of good beer and somewhat less smarter than when you entered. Then your kid tells you he had a great day and says despite the fact he finds NASCAR boring to watch on the bar TV, that he likes hanging out with you. Somehow it makes it all worth it, but you wonder how much more fun it would have been with Thomas there too.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 8:49 PM

 
The Purpose of Bad Beer

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts,

- Shakespeare

BOAM (Brother of Anonymous Mike) sent me a list of the 10 Worst Beers and man are they bad.

However I have come not to judge such beers but to praise them for they too bring some good to our world and not merely to separate the sheep from the goats.

As many of you know, I like good beer. As some of you know I like to drink alot of good beer. I may not be as much of an expert as say the Indomitable Thomas but I can hold my own as both a brewer and taster. So I say to you that even bad beer, even drainage fodder, has a part to play.

First allow me to recount a bit from my personal history....

Years ago while I was but a wee undergrad I accompanied my roommate as he visited some friends in the Upper New York State badlands. On a Friday afternoon in Syracuse, I accompanied said roommate and his friends to buy that night's beer supply. They picked as their beer of choice the most vile beverage known to man, of which its only virtue was that it was $3.99 a case. I tried to supply the money to upgrade the beer but was refused. We immediately departed to an apartment to consume.

After a few hours, I was still trying to choke down my first beer while the others in my party were into their sixth or seventh. All of the sudden the call went out for a cross-state road trip but who was still sober enough to drive? That would be me, the only person who couldn't drink the sewer water... which meant I was the designated driver for the remainder of the night.

So there you go, the purpose of bad beer... to stick some poor sucker with the role of the night's designated driver.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 10:23 AM

 
Depends on the Windmill

Remember a few years ago when Governor Napolitano was pounding on every initiative dealing with illegal immigration coming out of the Legislature? Remember he justification? That immigration was a federal issue?

So what's with the news that the Governor's Regulatory Review Council has adopted tougher tailpipe standards in order to reduce greenhouse gases and reduce the threat of global warming?

The standards OK'd by the Governor's Regulatory Review Council would be phased-in, requiring a fleetwide 30 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from new cars and trucks by 2016. It was a big win for Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, environmental groups and others pushing for Arizona to take tangible steps to head off global warming before it brings higher temperatures, reduced streamflows and worsening drought conditions to the desert Southwest.

Now it's one thing if you want to get an environmentally friendly car because you are responsible individual. It's another thing to mandate cleaner cars because say, the local air stinks, and it may be nice to make your local community doesn't have air like brown goop. It's another thing to mandate cleaner cars in your little corner of the world to combat a perceived global problem because while the effect may be akin to spitting in the world, the cost of the spitting is quite high.

...estimates that the new standards would increase the price of a new car or truck by more than $1,000. Vehicle manufacturers peg that figure at closer to $6,000.

Just so you know what the goal is

Tougher emissions standards are central to Napolitano's push to reduce the state's greenhouse-gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2020, and 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2040.

This reminds me of those t-shirts that are meant to irk vegetarians "For every animal you don't eat, I'll eat three!" Arizona could cut its greenhouse-gas emission to zero and it wouldn't make a dent in any global warming given how small our economy is in relation to the carbon-producing monsters in Asia. For every extra-expensive hybrid you buy in Tempe, there's another coal-powered plant coming online somewhere China.

Thinking globally and acting locally makes a good bumper sticker but lousy regulatory policy.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 8:41 PM

 
The Strong Must Protect the Sweet- Wally Pipp Edition

So Krispy Kreme is coming back to the Valley...

So what?

Back when KK left the Valley, without ever calling me to say good bye I might add, I had to fend for myself for my monthly donut. They left me depressed, abandoned, and without even a severance package.

Well I moved on, got stronger, and found a better and may I add even cheaper donut- the Basha's chocolate-iced butter cream. I cannot decide which it is, either a heart attack or diabetic attack for the low, low price of 59 cents.

I have it on good authority that if you get to know the assistant bakery manager at the 7th St. & Missouri store, that she will let you have the special bootleg donuts which are more butter cream delivery vehicles than anything else.

So thanks for nothing Krispy Kreme, welcome back, and now leave me alone.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 10:46 AM

 
The Wright Stuff

A few thoughts on the whole Obama-Wright affair...

Back when Obama gave his first remarks on the Reverend Wright back on March 18, I thought the Senator was doubling down his bets. Obama had a chance to put the issue to bed by backing away from Wright, but instead he not only stuck by Wright but placed his own grandmother in the line of fire by equating attacks on his pastor as attacks on her. Remember "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"?

You would have thought Obama gave one of the greatest speeches of all time.

Well instead of lasting for the ages, it lasted about 6 weeks as Obama has started to back away from Wright as the latter made the same remarks this week in a public forum that he has been accused of making from the pulpit of his church, a church that Obama was a member of for 20 years.

Political campaigns are about getting to know a candidate. Their campaigns spends millions and work night and day to make surer we get to know them on their terms, but the unexpected will pop up and we get to know them through their actions. So what does this say about Obama?

When he said in Tuesday's press conference"...that obviously whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this", what is obvious? The only thing that had changed since Obama's March 18th speech was not the content of Wright's remarks but the fact that he made them this time in public at the National Press Club for all the media to see. Yes that was a "show of disrespect" to Obama in the sense that it exposes his prevarications on March 18.

So the most logical conclusions from all of this is that Obama sat in Wright's church for 20 years and listened to this crap. Did he believe it? I doubt it, if there is one defining characteristic of Obama is his decency. Did he understand what was being said? Almost surely, this was the man who graduated from Harvard Law magna cum laude.

So he isn't a racist or dumb, so the most charitable explanation for his behavior is opportunism. He likely sat in that church for 20 years, listening to remarks that must have repulsed him, because of the political credibility it gave him. In short, he acted like a normal politician. Where he got caught was to milk the same cow twice by basing his candidacy in large part on transcending race.

Being a politician isn't a crime. After all his Democratic opponent reeks political opportunism through her pores and the presumptive Republican nominee's signature legislative achievement is to restrict the First Amendment.

What is a crime is that a major part of Obama's appeal is his race and the hope that he offers the country with a history of black slavery and segregation by electing a black man to the highest elected office in the country. We know and he knows that and he has implicitly based his campaign on it. Now we find out that not only has he been basing his spiritual life on an institution that reeks of racism but that he considers as a father figure a man who repeatedly makes and without shame the most vile of racist remarks. He has tied his life intimately to a man who is so vile that if you suggested his as a character for a Hollywood movie, he would be rejected as being simply too fantastic.

To top it off, when he is caught in this hypocrisy like the proverbial minister who has made his name by preaching virtue but is found caught in the bed of a prostitute, he doubles down his bets and excuses the racist creep by invoking the sins of not only the country but of his own grandmother

So what is the compelling reason for his candidacy again?

Oh yeah he's a Democrat whose name isn't Hillary Clinton.

Whoa
posted by Anonymous Mike at 9:18 AM

 
Why I Don't Care About the Suns

A couple of things first.

I understand that being a fan of professional sports can be seen from some quarters as a somewhat bizarre undertaking. Wasting one's precious time and money to follow a bunch of grown men being paid outrageous sums of money to play a game, well I cannot think of a rational way to justify it. It takes a suspension of disbelief. However I do enjoy watching professional athletics, especially baseball.

I used to be a huge NBA fan. Earlier today on ESPN they were showing some footage from one of the Lakers-Sixers Finals of the early 80s and I sat there enthralled not so much by the fact that I knew every player in the film by sight but I bet I could give you a 3 to 5 minute summary of each guy's career highlights, even Mark Landsberger.

Now I could care less. The NBA is dead to me.

How did this happen? I can think of three reasons.

First I stopped identifying with the players. It didn't occur to me this was going on until Jordan 2nd retirement in 1998 but it probably happened earlier. The players who enabled my suspension of disbelief, like Doctor J and Larry Bird, were being replaced by despicable figures such as Kenny Anderson and Shawn Kemp. It seemed that the league was hell bent on wasting the precious capital it had earned from its previous golden decade. The great Bulls teams of the 1990s, the great sportsmen like Olajuwan and Jordan only masked a deep seedy underbelly of fundamentally flawed play and too many players coasting on guaranteed contracts.

Second, the NBA started to cut its ties to the local communities. It's hard enough to develop an emotional connection to teams that seem to completely turn-over their roster every few seasons but it's impossible when you know the franchise could be just as transient as the players. It started at the beginning of the decade when the owner of the Charlotte Hornets ran the team into the ground despite having a supportive community and was allowed with the league's blessing to pick up and move the team to New Orleans. Now this year the NBA is using the Seattle as an example to other NBA cities by allowing the Sonics to move to the smaller market of Oklahoma City, all because Seattle wouldn't build the team its second publicaly financed arena in 12 years.

I could also add the example of the Grizzlies who a few years ago moved from Vancouver to Memphis and may be moving to yet another city but no one seems to care. Their example just goes to prove that the league and the owners would rip a team out of one community and place it in another as long as they could get a better arena deal

Third and the final straw was the whole Tim Donaghy affair where Donaghy was found to have ties to organized crime and helping to fix games he refereed in. The thing was, I wasn't the least surprised.

Enough

I guess for all of those reasons, I'm going to stick with juiced up baseball and football players and the greedy owners in those sports, after all there is only so much nonsense I can take. Sometime in June when the local temperature is above 110 I will turn on the TV and discover that someone won the NBA Championship. If I care to think of it, I will reminence about the days when life used to be simpler, when the NBA Finals used to be shown on tape delay and the Kings played some of their games in Nebraska.

Have fun NBA, we shared some good times but it was nice knowing you.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 3:15 PM