It made the last "best of the blogs" list, but is worth noting on its own: Going through meeting minutes, Evan Lisull of the Desert Lamp finds the Arizona Students Association and the Arizona Board of Regents doing as much squirming as necessary to intervene against 2008's Proposition 104 making the ballot without running afoul of the law.
Proposition 104, for those who don't remember, was what the crass called the "Ward Connerly Initiative", which would have prohibited racial discrimination by the State in, among other things, hiring or the awarding of contracts.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Prop 400 "No" lead expands
Based on the 1:43 PM update of the County's official results, votes against Tucson Proposition 400 (waiver of the Article 9 spending limit aka "Home Rule") number 32,416; votes for the measure number 31,671. "No" has a 745-vote lead.
I'm still not ready to call it victory, but: Thanks go out to everyone who took a deep breath, realized that the measure has broader implications than "the city can spend the money it receives", and voted "no".
I'm still not ready to call it victory, but: Thanks go out to everyone who took a deep breath, realized that the measure has broader implications than "the city can spend the money it receives", and voted "no".
Tucson/Pima County election early results: some good news
From the Elections Division's website, with 98.9% of precincts reporting:
For those interested in the city council races, Fimbres is far ahead of McClusky, Uhlich has a 600-vote lead on Buehler-Garcia, making it too close to call, and Kozachick, with a 1200 vote lead over Trasoff, is the likely winner.
Amphi's override elections (Propositions 403 and 404) are close, but it looks like "No" is winning, meaning the district's overrides will not be renewed. The Vail bond issue (Proposition 408) looks likely to pass, but it looks like voters are canceling Vail's override (Proposition 409) as well. Sahuarita's override (Proposition 410) is being defeated by a 10% margin. Fiscal responsibility appears popular this year.
Word is turnout on the East Side is high: for the purposes of this race, a good thing.
The unorganized opposition to Prop. 400--who else is out there?--can't celebrate just yet, but there's more reason to be hopeful than I thought possible 24 hours ago. Early voting has the measure succeeding; polling shows the opposite. This isn't the pattern for Props 401 and 402. I can't take credit, but I wonder how many votes my eleventh-hour guest opinion was worth.
- Proposition 200 is being handily defeated, 70%-30%,
- Proposition 400 is surprisingly close, but defeat edges out success almost 31676 against to 31054 for,
- Proposition 401 and 402 are both being solidly defeated, with "no" votes amounting to around 60% for both.
For those interested in the city council races, Fimbres is far ahead of McClusky, Uhlich has a 600-vote lead on Buehler-Garcia, making it too close to call, and Kozachick, with a 1200 vote lead over Trasoff, is the likely winner.
Amphi's override elections (Propositions 403 and 404) are close, but it looks like "No" is winning, meaning the district's overrides will not be renewed. The Vail bond issue (Proposition 408) looks likely to pass, but it looks like voters are canceling Vail's override (Proposition 409) as well. Sahuarita's override (Proposition 410) is being defeated by a 10% margin. Fiscal responsibility appears popular this year.
Word is turnout on the East Side is high: for the purposes of this race, a good thing.
The unorganized opposition to Prop. 400--who else is out there?--can't celebrate just yet, but there's more reason to be hopeful than I thought possible 24 hours ago. Early voting has the measure succeeding; polling shows the opposite. This isn't the pattern for Props 401 and 402. I can't take credit, but I wonder how many votes my eleventh-hour guest opinion was worth.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Summaries and recommendations for all 17 Pima County ballot questions are up.
Were it not for an editing outage at exactly the wrong time, this would have been posted last night and on Google News this morning.
Over on Associated Content, I have summarized all of the Pima County ballot questions, and provided a voting recommendation for each. A few "yes" votes on the school questions--my erstwhile co-'bloggers should feel free to put up zillion-word posts telling me I'm wrong--but mostly "no"s.
Over on Associated Content, I have summarized all of the Pima County ballot questions, and provided a voting recommendation for each. A few "yes" votes on the school questions--my erstwhile co-'bloggers should feel free to put up zillion-word posts telling me I'm wrong--but mostly "no"s.
Monday, November 02, 2009
An afterthought: the Tucson City Council race
Candidates for Tucson City Council have been lackluster. We've all read about the failings of Karin Uhlich and Nina Trasoff; neither has been a supporter of fiscal responsibility and both were original proponents of the rent tax The Republican challengers have shown very bad judgement in their support for Prop. 200 and Ben Buehler-Garcia has, in defense of this, claimed falsely that crime is increasing. You've already seen this. Cue up a Ben Stein recording. Buehler? Buehler? Democrat Richard Fimbres, on the other hand, is far too much of an insider, very connected to the retiring Steve Leal, and offers more of the same when we should be seeing proposals for lasting change.
No endorsements, but here's how I'm voting:
For the Ward 3 seat, I'm casing my vote for Mary DeCamp of the Green Party (and "of the non-existent campaign"), because she is neither Karin Uhlich nor Ben Buehler-Garcia.
For the Ward 5 seat, Fimbres gets my vote because Scott Stewart, who contends with Ted Downing for the distinction of being "the most reasonable and decent person in Southern Arizona politics", has endorsed him.
Regarding Ward 6: in the same spirit as the Tucson Weekly, I highly recommend the banh mi at Saigon Pho. Kozachik will probably reluctantly receive my vote: when in doubt, throw the incumbent out!
No endorsements, but here's how I'm voting:
For the Ward 3 seat, I'm casing my vote for Mary DeCamp of the Green Party (and "of the non-existent campaign"), because she is neither Karin Uhlich nor Ben Buehler-Garcia.
For the Ward 5 seat, Fimbres gets my vote because Scott Stewart, who contends with Ted Downing for the distinction of being "the most reasonable and decent person in Southern Arizona politics", has endorsed him.
Regarding Ward 6: in the same spirit as the Tucson Weekly, I highly recommend the banh mi at Saigon Pho. Kozachik will probably reluctantly receive my vote: when in doubt, throw the incumbent out!
TUSD voters: say no to frivolous computer purchases by voting no on Prop 402
A day before the election, the final post on this year's ballot questions for my area.
Voters in TUSD's boudaries are being asked to approve a capital outlay override (Proposition 402) the purposes of which is (according to TUSD) computer equipment upgrades.
It's a mix of reasonable and unreasonable requests. Were upgrading network switches to decrease energy consumption and replacing inefficient old business operations software the only proposed options, I'd recommend a "yes" vote. But taxpayers are also being asked to fund an increase in Internet connection speed and replace up to 10,000 "worn out or failing" classroom computers.
Computers do not get "worn out". They are either failing or not failing. Many of the remarks made by supporters of Prop. 402 to the press make it sound as though the computers are to be replaced because they are old. For grade-school and high-school classroom purposes, older computers are as good as new ones. Even DOS machines with Wordperfect 5 and Lotus 1-2-3 would probably work well--an that's fancier than the IBM PCs we used in grade school!--except where Web access is needed or for the purposes of a high-school programming course in which the students should probably be learning C or C++. Even for those purposes, Athlon machines--a dime a dozen--running Linux will do just fine.
Want an example of the sort of weasel talk has got my blood boiling here? See Robert Breault's guest opinion defending Prop 402 in the Daily Star. Breault claims:
But what "modern software", versions of which didn't run on the 686 that I bought in 1999, is really of use in the classroom? That machine accessed the Internet, ran a GUI wordprocessor and spreadsheet, and even was used for scientific computation? And Breault, being a tech guy himself, must surely know that Internet searches are done on the server side, not the client side: speed of the machine being used to access the search engine doesn't affect the speed of the search. And whatever it is those technicians he names at the ends do on computers, the kids won't be learning it in grade school or high school no matter how new their computers are. Computer basics--which, to me, means using a computer to compute something!--can be learned on an old machine as well as a new one.
Baloney, in short. Arguments for upgrades are baloney. They may have a reasonable core, but they've been universally padded with so much bad argument that the request itself is suspect. The District has not given a curriculum-based argument for new computers or faster Internet access. Moreover, the District has insufficiently explored another option: replacing its failing computers with hand-me-downs from homes and businesses. A 5-year-old machine replaced because its user wants to play the newest video games or because asking office staff to not use the latest frivolous upgrade of MS Word as an interchange format is somehow asking too much can have plenty of life left for school purposes. But public schools don't ask.
As noted in the Pima Association of Taxpayers' argument in the official information packet (page 35 of the file), TUSD is already entitled to Federal "E-Rate" telephone tax money, were TUSD to put together a successful application. (TUSD can receive the money due to, among other things, the number of students in the hot-lunch program...) We're already being taxed on our phone billsto pay for technology upgrades for TUSD; TUSD mismanagement means the schools don't receive the money. Prop. 402 is a double-tax, asking the taxpayer to make up for TUSD's errors. Turn the page of the packet to find BEST TUSD's argument for more of the same. We're being asked to pay to make up for vendor favoritism, loss of E-rate funds, and other mismanagement.
See Dave Devine's 2006 report in the Tucson Weekly or just search the Web for the keywords "TUSD" and "E-rate" to learn more about what has transpired.
Hold on for Federal phone tax money, don't subsidize TUSD bureaucrats' failures. Vote "No" on 402.
Voters in TUSD's boudaries are being asked to approve a capital outlay override (Proposition 402) the purposes of which is (according to TUSD) computer equipment upgrades.
It's a mix of reasonable and unreasonable requests. Were upgrading network switches to decrease energy consumption and replacing inefficient old business operations software the only proposed options, I'd recommend a "yes" vote. But taxpayers are also being asked to fund an increase in Internet connection speed and replace up to 10,000 "worn out or failing" classroom computers.
Computers do not get "worn out". They are either failing or not failing. Many of the remarks made by supporters of Prop. 402 to the press make it sound as though the computers are to be replaced because they are old. For grade-school and high-school classroom purposes, older computers are as good as new ones. Even DOS machines with Wordperfect 5 and Lotus 1-2-3 would probably work well--an that's fancier than the IBM PCs we used in grade school!--except where Web access is needed or for the purposes of a high-school programming course in which the students should probably be learning C or C++. Even for those purposes, Athlon machines--a dime a dozen--running Linux will do just fine.
Want an example of the sort of weasel talk has got my blood boiling here? See Robert Breault's guest opinion defending Prop 402 in the Daily Star. Breault claims:
10-year-old computers cannot run modern software and it takes too long to do a simple Internet search.
Computer literacy prepares students for college and the workplace. In today's world, everyone — from medical technicians to heavy-machinery operators to optical engineers — must master modern computer technology.
But what "modern software", versions of which didn't run on the 686 that I bought in 1999, is really of use in the classroom? That machine accessed the Internet, ran a GUI wordprocessor and spreadsheet, and even was used for scientific computation? And Breault, being a tech guy himself, must surely know that Internet searches are done on the server side, not the client side: speed of the machine being used to access the search engine doesn't affect the speed of the search. And whatever it is those technicians he names at the ends do on computers, the kids won't be learning it in grade school or high school no matter how new their computers are. Computer basics--which, to me, means using a computer to compute something!--can be learned on an old machine as well as a new one.
Baloney, in short. Arguments for upgrades are baloney. They may have a reasonable core, but they've been universally padded with so much bad argument that the request itself is suspect. The District has not given a curriculum-based argument for new computers or faster Internet access. Moreover, the District has insufficiently explored another option: replacing its failing computers with hand-me-downs from homes and businesses. A 5-year-old machine replaced because its user wants to play the newest video games or because asking office staff to not use the latest frivolous upgrade of MS Word as an interchange format is somehow asking too much can have plenty of life left for school purposes. But public schools don't ask.
As noted in the Pima Association of Taxpayers' argument in the official information packet (page 35 of the file), TUSD is already entitled to Federal "E-Rate" telephone tax money, were TUSD to put together a successful application. (TUSD can receive the money due to, among other things, the number of students in the hot-lunch program...) We're already being taxed on our phone billsto pay for technology upgrades for TUSD; TUSD mismanagement means the schools don't receive the money. Prop. 402 is a double-tax, asking the taxpayer to make up for TUSD's errors. Turn the page of the packet to find BEST TUSD's argument for more of the same. We're being asked to pay to make up for vendor favoritism, loss of E-rate funds, and other mismanagement.
See Dave Devine's 2006 report in the Tucson Weekly or just search the Web for the keywords "TUSD" and "E-rate" to learn more about what has transpired.
Hold on for Federal phone tax money, don't subsidize TUSD bureaucrats' failures. Vote "No" on 402.
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