Tucson Weekly: The Skinny (November 20

HEY, SUNTRAN AUDITORS: Don't have enough to do? Here's an amusing little rumor into which you may wish to poke your ferrity little accountants' snouts:
Why is it that when the bus company introduced a new, more sophisticated fare box--you know, that thing that we harried taxpaying riders must feed before parking our tired butts on the generally shabby SunTran seats--why is it that overall bus system revenues allegedly went up by $250,000 or so during the first fiscal quarter after those new boxes were introduced?
Could it have to do with the new boxes' more complicated security systems? If so, would that seem to suggest that someone, or some group, had been skimming, oh, roughly $750,000 a year off the top?
Nah, we'd never stick our own ferrity little snouts into that one. Might get bit.
AND BOARD PRESIDENT BLUTO BLUTARSKI SECONDED THE NOMINATION: We hear gas-station owner Jesse Lugo has been nominated to fill a vacancy on the Pima Community College Board. You may recall Tucson City Councilman José Ibarra reported a sloshed Lugo assaulted him last year because Ibarra voted against Lugo's rezoning request.
Although Ibarra didn't bother pressing charges--largely, we're told, because the creeps with Lugo at the time probably wouldn't have told the truth in court--the cops said there would have been probable cause to cite the alleged bully.
Yeah, we can imagine Lugo would set a fine example on that board. We can hear him now: "Hey, kids! It's easy to solve your problems--just get drunk and hit someone! Works for low-class, macho dorks like me!"
ALLWET: Man, are we getting tired of these Tucson Water customers who live outside of town whining about not having any say in the CAP issue or the city-owned water utility in general. Last week one letter writer to The Arizona Daily Star went so far as to compare his situation to the sort of taxation without representation that triggered the American Revolution.
Skinny No it's not, you ignorant twit. First, while we all generally get the kind of government we deserve, most of us, as individuals anyway, don't have much of a say in what privately owned utility companies are doing; and you don't have any say in this city-owned utility because--and we'll say this real slowly: YOU CHOSE TO LIVE OUTSIDE OF THE CITY LIMITS!
Get annexed or form your own damn water company.
It's funny how these complaints never seem to rise when the bill comes due for water bonds, which Tucson taxpayers subsidize for county residents who feel so disenfranchised.
The sad thing about this infantile whining is that it's not limited merely to grade-school dropouts who suffer from a lack of education about how governments operate; nor is it confined to the educated, though lazy, masses who relied solely on local TV news for their election information. No, this puking public colic has now spread to our political "leaders," who should damn well know better.
Well, we take that back in the case of Pima County Stupidvisor Mikey "The Flaky Waffleman" Boyd, formerly an on-air TV reporter and therefore a lifetime member of the Drooling Idiot's Club (Motto: A Little Knowledge Is, Like, Really Scary, Man). But certainly state Sen. Ann Day should know better.
So why is it that immediately after the TV cameras captured all those frumpy, middle-aged foothills voters pouting like spoiled brats as they exited the polls, Day steps up to pledge she'll find a way to change this supposedly "unfair" water situation?
We suspect it's because she's run up against term limits in the Legislature, and now she's trying to score points with the folks she hopes to snare as her next constituency, namely the voters in Boyd's supervisorial district. Boyd has told everybody who'll bother to listen--and even a few people who weren't gagged and bound to large, immovable objects--that he wants out of his current situation. And we hear rumors that Day wouldn't mind taking his place.
Is that what you learned in the Legislature, Ann? That the truly successful pol knows how to ride the big waves of voter ignorance? If so, we're certain the surf will always be up for you here in Pima County.
THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE: With last week's state appellate court ruling that two recent local municipal incorporations are invalid on narrow legal grounds, Tucson Mayor George Miller donned his bat cape and immediately set about his batty mission.
The Mayor made it clear to his fellow members of the City Council that it was high time to revive his program to save the Naked Pueblo from the evils of, uh, too many, er, not enough, um...
Anyway, the Mayor thinks Tucson should claim as many residents of this valley as possible, because, he reasons, that will make it an even bigger city! Which, in Miller's mind at least, is somehow always better--never mind that Tucson taxpayers will continue to pay outrageously to extend infrastructure and services to the rapidly growing hinterlands, and never mind that in many instances city government has been doing a piss-poor job of serving its current residents.
Miller has instructed his bat-winged bureaucratic monkeys to fly out into the countryside to promote his plan to add additional wards, and to make city voting a ward-specific affair. This, he supposedly believes, will make even the most lily-white, gated-community dwellers among the fair foothills residents eager to join us roiling brown masses in the lowlands.
Actually, what adding more wards and Council people will do is make it even more difficult for ordinary Tucson folks to reach the Council in any meaningful way when something important comes up. Of course the developers, PR slimeballs and professional spin doctors will have no such trouble--since they don't have real jobs and can take all the time they want to lobby the Council. Miller's plan is nothing more than an attempt to keep those in power fat and happy. Party on, Tucson!
WILL THE REAL CULPRIT PLEASE STAND UP? It's now generally accepted that the punch-card system of voting is an anachronism prone to error and susceptible to fraud. Hey, it can't be terribly accurate--it's still the voting method of choice in Cook County and Chicago.
But the recent flap over the supposedly bad ballots that prompted a recount in the City Council contest between Alison Hughes and Fred Ronstadt is: Why didn't anybody in power notice, during all these years, just how crappy the system really was?
Some people did, but for a generation the leading local "expert" in the area of voting was former Secretary of State Jim Shumway, who served as elections director in both Pima and Maricopa counties, as deputy secretary of state, and who was appointed secretary of state when his then-boss Rose Mofford moved up to governor. He lost the Democratic primary in 1990 to Dick Mahoney.
Shumway's entire career was based on convincing all major jurisdictions that nothing was wrong with our vote-counting methods. He perpetuated an obsolete and inaccurate system by not advocating it's replacement--hey, nobody wants to be told they need to spend money to replace something when the guy in charge says it's OK. Never mind that any computer-literate bozo knows punch cards went out with Elvis.
Well, it isn't and never was the best way, and real experts have known it for years. And the irony is that whenever it falls on its ass, as it did in the recent city election and the last Pima County one, guess who gets paid as a consultant to come in and mumble some more? Jim Shumway. Instead of paying him to consult, Tucson taxpayers ought to be sending him the bill for the recount.
We wonder how many other times this system has failed? Surely there must have been some major screw-ups that weren't as obvious as the last two. How many election blunders have been kicked under the rug over the years?
Even after this latest snafu, City Clerk Kathy Detrick still likes and justifies the crummy punch-card system. This is the same clerk who didn't notice the problem that caused the Hughes-Rondstadt recount. Please remember: If Leo Pilachowski and John Kromko hadn't found the massive statistical anomaly that triggered the recount, the City Clerk's office would have blithely put the election to bed as originally reported.
We hope the "new" bubble card system--actually, just a modification of the test-score cards we've all been using for a couple of generations--will eliminate some of the problems. But we note that those proposing this system are mostly the same folks who liked the last one.
Furthermore, there were far more options to choose from than local officials looked at before finally making this long-overdue change. For example, in some third-world nations, they've already gone to computerized voting kiosks.
The first and most simple function of any democratic government is to count the votes. If they can't hack that, then is it any wonder that confidence in those in charge is at an all-time low?
A BEDPAN FULL O' NEWS: We suppose the docs over at University Medical Center are as good, if not better, than any around. But that sure doesn't justify the major ass-kissing KVOA-TV, Channel 4, bestowed upon UMC at 6 p.m. Friday, November 13.
This one made that recent pathetically promotional "Snapple segment" on Channel 13 news look like a mere blip on the local TV sleaze-o-scope. How could Channel 4 News Director Mick Jensen possibly justify devoting an entire show to such shameless, unabashed puffery?
Oh, we forgot--he's sleeping with one of UMC's many public relations officials--his wife, Kate Jensen. Who, our spies tell us, is friends with yet another UMC PR type, Nancy Guthrie--who, oddly enough, just happens to be the mother of Savannah Guthrie, KVOA's painful-to-watch weekend child-anchor. Yeah, elevating Guthrie to anchor was certainly a decision made in the cold light of rationality, eh Mick?
We, who make no claim to the supposed journalistic principles of neutrality, balance and fairness ourselves, find it amusing indeed when such a supposedly "professional" news-gathering organization (it must be professional--the guy reporters are wearing sport coats) so clumsily reveals itself for what it really is--nothing but a tool of the often deceptive and always manipulative public relations industry and the power structure it serves.

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