Ecology of Alta Sonora

From lunch last month with an undisclosed applied mathematician:

There are three people in town who feed the (non-native) pigeons, I mean, feed a lot of pigeons. If they were to stop, we'd have no pigeons at all in Tucson.

File this one in the "there ought to be a law" department. There are native species which occupy the same niche (give or take) and which must be adversely affected by the flying rats!

Desert? What desert?

If we thought about local climate and ecology the way some commentators approach global warming, today's unseasonal wind and rain in Tucson would cast categorical doubt on the area being a desert!

It's a fairly well-documented if not quantitatively studied phenomenon: the common person does not understand that claims such as "drought", "global warming", or "desert" have associated time scales. "I can water my rocks, because it rained last week. Those people saying we're in a drought are a bunch of commie alarmists who have something against property rights and a good old fashined green lawn!"

Surely the louts, at least at the margin, will be extra wasteful this week. Hopes to get them to understand or even believe that water is a finite resource are perhaps misplaced. We have a "technology", if you will, which can bring about water conservation without getting the IQ-95 set to understand complicated arguments or waiting for the curmudgeons with mal fide objections to science in line. It's called "the free market". Aquifier-by-aquifier cap-and-trade would cause water's scarcity to be reflected in its price, and provide a means to gently wean the region off of diminishing stocks of Colorado River water.

What's keeping this ready-made "technology" from being applied? The last time Tucson Water raised its rates, there was political upheaval; understaning the meaning of "drought" and "scarcity" is not a necessary voter qualification. Thus we elect politicians who confound technocratic mitigation schemes and long-term solutions. This despite the current "going green" fad! Where's our homegrown Al Gore?

SB1214 update

According to a report sent out this morning by Senator Johnson's office, SB 1214, which would allow CCW permit holders to carry on public university grounds, will not receive its third reading today.

Ordinarily, this would mean that the bill is dead, since the House (Arizona has a bicameral legislature) must set its agenda soon. However, if the bill passes the Senate next week, it can still be sent to the house and given its fair hearing by amendment of the agenda. Knowing that SB1214 will be controversial, Senate President Tim Bee held the bill up to allow Senators time to draft amendments, rather than inserting it in the calendar with little more than a day's notice. The bill will likely receive its third reading next week.

A clarification from yesterday; Johnson's amendment to her own bill has not yet been formally adopted; it will be introduced and voted on at the third reading. We can expect it to pass, as it is probably the result of discussion with those like Paula Aboud who feel that CCW training is somewhat inadequate.

Whether it will mollify them enough remains to be seen. Regardless, don't expect a party-line vote on this one. Governor Napolitano and the UA Young Democrats aside, this is a Western state; many Democrats carry weapons and most, unlike Ken Cheuvront, aren't out-of-touch with gun rights advocates or ignorant of even the terms of the debate. Senate Minority Leader Marsha Arzberger probably carries her .38 Special illegally in the Senate building, and can thus sympathize with students, faculty, and staff who want to carry at, to, and from the universities. Rumor has it that Minority Whip Rebecca Rios is also sympathetic.

SB1214 is headed to the floor; will UA students, faculty, and staff win the right to self-defense?

Arizona has had a "shall issue" policy for issuance of CCW permits since 1994, but hearing it from some, you'd think that concealed carry is still a novelty, and that we simply don't know if people will start committing aggravated assault --or worse, shooting each other--left and right, if guns will "go off", etc.

The rhetoric we've been hearing about Senator Karen Johnson's SB1214, which would merely extend the right of CCW permit holders to allow carry at Arizona's state universities, has been, for the most part, a repeat of what we've heard every time firearms liberalization has been proposed since Florida didn't become the "Gunshine State" in the late 1980s: incredulity, fanciful scenarioes, and personal ignorance. European professors perhaps get a pass (with an admonishment tacked on: start learning about your host country, and reading Barbara Ehrenreich or Howard Zinn does not count!), but undergraduates who've for the most part lived in a concealed carry state since before they learned to read and faculty who've interacted peacefully with people packing heat in movie theaters, grocery stores, and plenty of stressful traffic encounters for over a decade have no excuse.

Perhaps this debate is even more obnoxious than usual; many of the "antis" don't even know what the bill does and talk about "kids" "running around" with guns as though SB1214 enables schoolchildren to carry. It doesn't even allow eighteen year old college students, who can at any time enlist in the military and be given responsibility for a burst-firing M16, to carry. All it does is to remove a nonsensical geographic restriction of the right to carry, allowing those of us who work or study (or, in my case, both) at a state university the to effectively defend ourselves against armed attackers at, to, and from University grounds.

The debate over firearms liberalization has been going on for over two decades, yet quite a few of our elected officials have been too busy to learn the basics. Take, for example, the discussion in the Democratic caucus:

Democratic Caucus Notes:

SB 1214 concealed weapons; school grounds
SPONSOR: JOHNSON JUD 2/25/2008 DPA (4-3-0-0)
(No: CHEUVRONT,HALE,MIRANDA)
RULES 3/10/2008 PFCA

Purpose (For more information see Fact Sheet): Allows a person with a
valid concealed carry weapons (CCW) permit to possess a concealed
firearm on the grounds of a community college or university.

[snipped RTS names--BSK]

Amanda Rohrkemper (Dem. Intern) explained the bill.

Sen. Cheuvront: They did make some good points how discipline could
really be increased if the teacher had a firearm in his/her possession.

Caucus chuckled.

Sen. Cheuvront: The people in support of this bill justify it by the
large amount of training. The problem is that they don't receive that
much training.

Sen. Aboud: I actually took two of these CCW courses, and I feel that at
least half the people don't have an adequate amount of gun knowledge.

Sen. Burton-Cahill: Maybe this is the time for us to increase the amount
of training for CCW holders. We should require more time out on the
range as well as in the classroom. In the last seven years, we've taken
the renewing training from four hours to two hours to absolutely
nothing. I'd like to propose a Floor Amendment that increases the
education for a CCW permit. It will also reinstate some sort of
training or testing to see whether additional training is needed.

Sen. Cheuvront: What kind of mental health is considered when issuing a
CCW permit?

Sen. Burton-Cahill: To that point, my father had several strokes last
fall and is now not permitted to drive. However, if he did have a CCW
permit, there would be nothing stopping him from continuing to hold it.

Amanda: To receive a CCW permit, a person must not suffer from a mental
illness. There are also other qualifications.

Sen. Cheuvront: Those are initial tests, but are they continually
checked?

Christina Estes-Werther (Research Staff): There is a criminal background
check taken every five years. I'd also like to mention that in
Republican Caucus, there was a concern that this bill does not address
university lockdown situations. Therefore, there may be a Floor
Amendment to address that.

Sen. Cheuvront: These people are not trained for this type of police
work.

Apparently Ken Cheuvront thinks self-defense is "police work", and moreover thinks aggravated assault is a laughing matter. Perhaps Cheuvront Wine and Cheese has the police hanging out like the bodyguard ninjas in Curse of the Golden Flower, ready to drop out of the rafters to defend against all threats, but they're not to be found in my lab, the Mountain Avenue bike path, dormitories, or sorority house lawns.

Aboud's remarks are a little more well-taken. Perhaps training could be better, although the "antis" haven't come forward with even anecdotes of irresponsible CCW holders missing their targets and doing more harm then good. Nonetheless, many (who seem to get their notions of police skill with firearms from movies) feel that it takes a policeman's training to effectively defend one's self with a gun, to the point where adding such a requirement may mean the difference between victory and defeat for the right of people like me to carry to and from their workplace. Ergo a floor amendment to be introduced by Karen Johnson later today when the bill gets its third read, requiring those who'd carry in campus buildings to pass the firing test required of police officers.

That's an easy compromise if there ever was one; let's hope it does the trick. I've been working hard for the past few weeks helping the Students for Concealed Carry in the uphill battle to educate our clueless peers and the even more clueless general public about SB1214; we're here to stay even if the bill stays. Check back for updates.

Cobb for Congress?

The word is that former Congressional staff economist Joe Cobb is considering a run against Ed Pastor (D-04) this fall.

Next to Jeff Flake, if elected he'd be the most qualified member of the delegation. He's sharp, personable, has an appreciation for nuance, and unwaveringly supports free minds and free markets. Here's hoping he gains some traction!

Flagstaff's mayoral primary: Disappointing but, in retrospect, shouldn't have been surprising.

Before the results of Flagstaff's mail-in mayoral election came in on Tuesday, I would have predicted that sitting mayor Joe Donaldson and either of Dave Schlosser or Rick Krug would go on to the general election. Both were polished and professional, in addition to having strong records of community service and activity. Schlosser, additionally, was the boldest campaigner, and the smartest man (or woman, for those who for some reason don't know English) in the race.

What I neglected to take into account was that Sara Presler-Hoefle is a registered, active Democrat, the only member of that party in the race. Forget that her record of service and activity in the community doesn't come close to either of Krug or Schlosser--the press had to play up her having been the NAU student body president!--and forget her ambiguous, somewhat vapid platform, which, much like a student body president's, naturally leads to the question "is that really in your power, and how would you do it?" Forget that she didn't fare well in the public debates. Even though this was a nonpartisan election, all the voters out there for whom being a registered Democrat is a signal of being a Good Person who Cares About The Poor and wants to Work Together Cooperatively knew her party affiliation; it was as widely reported as Schlosser's involvement with the Libertarian Party.

Remembering that Presler-Hoefle (does anyone else find agglutinative surnames obnoxious?) is a known Democrat puts a different and more believable spin on the results than Fred Solop's appeal to change-ism. If desire for change was the driving factor,the voters would've went for Schlosser, who brought the freshest ideas to the race. The Yellow Dog Effect explains the result more simply.

I suspect, too, that Krug and Schlosser would have, more often than Presler-Hoefle, been Donaldson voters' second choices, and that Krug would have been most Schlosser voters' second choice (and vice versa.) Polling of that sort wasn't done, so we'll have no way of knowing whether Flagstaff's crude election method works. Condorcet would ensure that the candidate most preferred when compared pairwise with the others wins the election; the primary-plus-two-way method can lead to artifactual winners. Consider the French Presidential Election of 2002. Le Pen was certainly not the electorate's second choice, and it's not clear that Chirac was more preferred than Jospin.

My prediction for the general election: Presler-Hoefle is Flagstaff's Jean-Marie Le Pen. that isn't to say that she's a bigot, but rather that she's out of touch with the values of the community. Schlosser voters will perhaps split between Donaldson and Presler-Hoefle, and Krug voters will back Donaldson, leaving Donaldson the winner.