Zona Politics Eps.35 from Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel on Vimeo.

On this week's episode of Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel: Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas has a one-on-one conversation with Sen. Bernie Sanders about his presidential campaign during last week's NetRoots Nation conference in Phoenix. (Special thanks to Five Steps Forward/NetRoots Nation for sharing their footage of the interview.) Then Nintzel sits down with Republican National Committeeman Bruce Ash and attorney Jeff Rogers to talk about Sanders, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the latest efforts to discredit Planned Parenthood and more. Watch online here or check us out on our new station, CW Tucson, at 8 a.m. Sunday, July 26. That's Channel 8 on Cox and Comcast and Channel 58 on DirecTV and the Dish Network.

Between recording some of my favorite locally made records released this year at his studio Midtown Island and fronting the pioneering Tucson rock group The Resonars, Matt Rendon's also got a little something else up his sleeve. Rendon's new project, called The Butterscotch Cathedral, is a high-concept full psych experiment that, from the first listen, actually teleports you to the UK in the mid-to-late '60s, rather than simply appropriating the sound.

National music blog Brooklyn Vegan released the first track from The Butterscotch Cathedral, drawing ties to both The Who and Beach Boys instantly. Truthfully, from that first song, it seems like the project and forthcoming album could comfortably nestle its way into Piper-era Pink Floyd or even The Beatles circa Sgt. Pepper as well. See for yourself:


Although we're going to have to wait until October to snag a copy of The Butterscotch Cathedral's self-titled debut, which will be released via Trouble in Mind (Jacco Gardner, Mikal Cronin, Del Shannon, etc.), Rendon also released a promo video for the project. Hopefully both "Flood of Mendoza" and that acid trip of a promo will hold us all over until then, but I doubt it. Anyway, without further ado:

In an effort to end the week on a high note, here's another good thing to follow the Couple of Good Things I posted about yesterday. By the way, I was accused by a few commenters of being kinda Pollyanna-ish in that post, making too much of a  big deal about small advances. One commenter said, "Let's not step over a dollar bill to pick up a nickel," a phrase I'd never heard before but which I will repeat ten times today so it becomes a permanent part of my vocabulary (I should mention, however, a google search indicated that the phrase usually talks about dimes, not nickels. Inflation, dontcha know). But sometimes, I just gotta take good news where I can find it.

Today's good thing is our ex-Gov. Janet Napolitano, now President of the University of California, announcing that she's raising wages of some workers in the U.C. system to $15 an hour.

Napolitano announced the move a day after Los Angeles County — the nation's largest government agency — agreed to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour in all unincorporated communities by 2020. Los Angeles enacted a similar plan earlier this year, becoming the largest city in the nation to do so.

Let me mention the limits of Napolitano's move before commenters do. It will only affect about 3,200 U.C. employees, not everyone currently making less than $15 per hour. Still, it's a small step forward in the struggle against income inequality. I honestly didn't expect the movement to raise the minimum wage to gather this much momentum this quickly, but I'm happy that it has.

Vote. Everybody is else is doing it. 

The U.S. Department of Education is giving Arizona a $20 million development grant for early childhood education. That's a very good thing. There's little argument that getting kids in educational situations before kindergarten is valuable for their educational and social development. Even Gov. Ducey agrees:

"Research shows that a quality early childhood education experience can yield significant long-term benefits on overall development of a child."

Yes, Ducey said that, adding, "We know that there's a good return on investment." And he's aware that Arizona has one of the lowest rates of preschool enrollment in the country. But he still won't fund it, because, well, we can't do things that are good for children and still cut business and income taxes—let alone add more beds in our for-profit prisons—can we?

So we'll have to leave it to the Feds to help us do what's right for kids.

Kelley Murphy with the Children's Action Alliance says the four-year federal grant of up to $20 million per year will be used to improve preschool services.

"This is a development grant, and it allows us to do a lot of the infrastructure work that has to be in place before we can really start expanding the number of kids that are getting into these programs," she says. "So it is a game-changer in that sense."

If you Like the Humane Society of Southern Arizona on Facebook, then you already know that our fair city has been nominated as a “Top City for Pets” by PetSmart’s Pet360.com. The winning city (we're one of five finalists) will receive a $5,000 dollar donation for a local animal shelter. That's pretty cool, right?

Well, we received an email saying Tucson is currently a very (That's right they said "very," underline and all) close second to Austin, Texas. We can't let those Texan fools win, so get voting!

In another sunny U.S. city — Tucson, Arizona — dogs reign supreme. This Arizona city has approximately 30 pet­friendly restaurants, six off­leash areas and 90 pet­friendly hotel options. With around 350 sunny days a year, Tucson is one of the sunniest cities in the U.S., which makes it a great place to go explore some of the many outdoor areas available to all pups. Then, after a long day of hitting the great outdoors, owners can lavish their dogs or cats with relaxing treatments at one of the tons of different spa and pet boutiques in the area. And fear not – all breeds are welcome in Tucson. In fact, the city hosts an annual Pitbulooza specifically to honor National Pit Bull Awareness Day.

In case you missed it, Tucson's craft beer scene is still on a seemingly unstoppable trajectory. Arizona Beer House is opening on July 24, bringing craft beer to the east side, and it seems locally brewed beer is cropping up in every Tucson neighborhood. If you're in the Ironhorse neighborhood, for instance, you might have noticed something new coming in on Hoff Avenue between Eighth and Ninth streets and that something new is Public Brewhouse. 

For the bar's soft opening, co-owners and brewers Mike Gura, Cody Van Haren and Don Rubino are offering six of their own beers on tap, as well as their house nitro coffee and Sarsaparilla. Although craft beer can definitely get pricy, Public is offering all pints for $5, half pints for $3 and tasting flights for $6. The opening line-up, which kicked off on July 22, includes a Saison (6.8 percent), Saison Noir (7 percent), Dino the Dog Nitro Chocolate Stout (6.3 percent), Public IPA (7.6 percent), Pale Ale (5.8 percent) and Slumlord English Pale Ale (3.9 percent).

The Saison, which Van Haren says is his favorite to brew, is a great place to start sampling what the brewery can really do. It's flavorful  but not overtly flavored and Gura says that's just he brews. 

"My brewing style is yeast forward," he adds, explaining that rather than adding flavoring elements and spices, he manipulates the yeast's natural qualities in the fermentation process to achieve that effect. 

Gura comes from a science background with a degree in physics and two masters degrees. However, it wasn't until he had trouble buying good craft beer while living in the booze-restrictive Utah that he began homebrewing. Once moving to Tucson, Gura met Van  Haren while both men worked as EMTs.

"Cody and I just work well together," Gura says. 

It was a long road to open and begin serving their locally-brewed beer at 209 N. Hoff Ave. in the courtyard behind the also recently opened craft beer and wine bar Ermanos. A crowdfunding campaign wrapped in 2013 to fund what became Public Brewhouse, and, after about three years of changing locations, working through zoning issues and more, Gura says the brewery has finally cleared all of the hurdles. 

"The mayor is interested in working with grassroots businesses but  there is this entrenched bureaucracy," Gura says.

Cutting through the red tape, Public Brewhouse will celebrate their  grand opening on Saturday, August 1. The event will feature beer specials, a food truck, live music and, of course, the Public brews from noon until 2 a.m.

After that, the crew at Public are planning to stay focused on brewing. The bar itself has large wooden community tables, shuffleboard and a Centipede arcade game to keep guests entertained and the space is zoned for live acoustic music, which Van Haren says will be incorporated down the road. 

Van Haren says the bar has the capability to fill up 20 taps eventually and and each of the men have plans for how to fill them. In the future, Rubino will expand his soda offerings and even include homemade kombucha on tap. Van Haren and Gura already are looking to dive into the increasingly popular sour beer category and make use of the large barrels in the brewery to begin aging beers. 

"We'll be making a whiskey cream ale that uses mesquite flour and a Belgian abbey ale—it's the kind of beer monks drank regularly," Gura says, adding, "They'd drink the Quads when they wanted to see God."

Gura is also planning on making fresh hopped brews using hops from Yakima Valley, Washington. He compares this brewing style to young wines like beaujolais nouveau or vinho verde. 

Overall, Public Brewhouse simply seeks to be a neighborhood bar with a strong line-up of one-of-a-kind beers. The planned hours, at this time, are Wednesday through Friday from 4 until 10 p.m. and Saturday from noon until 10 p.m. 

A former local musician gone veterans advocate is having a release party for his first poetry book, and all proceeds are going to his program Pay It Forward Tucson—a nonprofit that helps low-income families and veterans in Pima County.

The book, titled "Thoughts and Poetry for the Soul and out of Boredom," was released on Amazon a couple of weeks ago. "I really have no words to express my feelings right now," Engel Indo says in an email.

The book is a compilation of thoughts and poems Indo has posted on Facebook over the past five years. Some are in English and some are in his native language, Spanish. "It is 188 pages of personal experiences in love, in hate, in hope or the lack thereof," he says. 

I featured Indo, who is also a veteran, on the Tucson Weekly's "Local Heroes" issue from 2012. 

Many people know Indo through the Latin rock band A Son y Sol that used to play gigs on the streets of Fourth Avenue and at La Indita Mexican Restaurant. But his aspirations have always gone beyond performing. In the past couple of years, Indo has created various projects that benefit Tucson and communities south of the border, all the way to his hometown of Callao, Peru.

In 2010, Indo created De La Perla a Las Estrellas (From La Perla to the Stars), a program that used music to teach English to children growing up in Callao's La Perla district. It's one of the poorest districts in Peru, and where Indo grew up.

In 2009, Arizona became the first state to impose a drug-test rule for Welfare recipients (when there is a reasonable cause that is, which according to USA Today "reasonable cause" means you confess you've used drugs in the past 30 days.). Since then, about 87,000 people have been tested, and guess how many came out positive for drug use...

One during the first three years of the program, and a grand total of three from 2009 to 2014.

According to a write up by Mic's Gregory Krieg, the program is in place to allegedly protect taxpayer dollars, but it only saved Arizona $560 out of the $200 million its paid out in assistance since the testing program started:

"We don't want people who are abusing drugs to be on welfare," GOP state Rep. John Kavanagh told the Arizona Republic in 2009, "because that means that the taxpayers are subsidizing and facilitating illegal drug use."

But an examination of Arizona's experiment reveals a flawed policy that has failed to accomplish its stated goal. Instead of saving the state money, it's cost taxpayers millions of dollars while doing little more than further stigmatizing poverty and marginalizing the poor.

...

Checking in again in March, the Arizona Sonora News Service cited state Department of Economic Security figures which found that over the course of more than five years, "42 people have been asked to take a follow-up drug test and 19 actually took the test, 16 of whom passed. The other 23 were stripped of their benefits for failing to take the drug test."

That adds up to a grand total of three failed tests from 2009-2014. The net savings reaped from withholding benefits for those who either tested positive or failed to complete a drug test was around $3,500, once the $500 cost of testing the 19 is factored in, according to one state agency report. The haul is especially unimpressive when you consider the $1.7 million in savings state officials promised when they unveiled the program.

Still, Mic says at least six other states have similar programs that are also flawed. In Utah, 12 out of 466 people tested positive for drugs at a cost to the stat of $25,000. In Tennessee, 37 out of 16,017, or .023 percent, of recipients failed their drug test. 

Read the entire article here. 

Last week, we talked about something called the "Summer Passport," a scavenger hunt of sorts, dreamed up by our advertorial team. This week, they handed me the prize list. You can read your way through the whole thing below but it's, uh, a lot.  

Here's the deal: 

Pick up a Weekly and flip through until you see a bingo-style page. For the issue that comes out today, it's on Page 15. Start visiting the businesses, the first of which will give you a yellow stamp sheet likes the ones pictures below. Each business has a task you have to complete (ie, take a selfie, eat a quesadilla, sing on stage—basically, things you would want to be doing with your day anyway) in order to get their square marked off. Once you've stopped by all 24 locations, come by the newsroom (7725 N. Mona Lisa Road, #125. We're open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and turn in your game card. You have until Friday, Sept. 4 at noon to enter.

We're giving away three ridiculously sizable packs of prizes. Basically, winning means we've got your entertainment and gift-giving budget covered for quite a while.

So hit the streets, check out some local businesses and do some good luck rituals, because these prizes are pretty damn hefty. But first, get a look at this prize list: