Stop calling minor political scandals “worse than Watergate.” It doesn’t matter what the scandal is, it likely isn’t worse than Watergate. Hyperbole is a well-used arrow in the rhetorical quiver of most politicians and the commentariat. Exaggeration to make a point has its place in political discourse. But to constantly describe something minor as something [...]
Is there something fundamentally broken in the relationship between the Tucson City Council and the city’s top staff? Last week the council found out that the $5 million in raises it approved for all city staff a few days earlier won’t actually cost $5 million but will instead cost $8 million. A few council members [...]
Everyone interested in the development of Downtown is excited about the possibility of a streetcar line that will lure restaurants and businesses to Downtown; also tourists, partying students, and folks from the Foothills.
The motto “build it and they will come” rings bell-like in every ear.
Now here’s a strange and wonderful thing…the lure is actually working. New restaurants and apartments are popping up all along the partially completed trolley tracks. Stude...
It turns out thatGovernor Brewer might be okay with that, according to a story in Friday’s Star. The expansion of Medicaid, which would add 300,000 people to the Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System, is being held hostage by a small group of ‘right to life’ legislators.
“No funds for Planned Parenthood or we’ll sink Medicaid expansion.”
Planned Parenthood is a primary source of family and health services of all sorts to women (and men) who might otherwise go without. The result...
On April 22 I reported that Tucson was ranked # 1 in the 2013 National Mayor’s Challenge on Water Conservation (click here) for our city size. The deadline to take the pledge online was April 30. Tucson was competing with other cities in the 300,000 to 600,000 population size. Well, Tucson won, along with Denver (CO), West Palm Beach (FL), Bremerton (WA) and Laguna Beach (CA)!
National Press release from Wyland Foundation below. They say on their website that “Together we pledged to ...
In 2007, a span of the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The bridge collapse was an example of what happens when tax-averse Americans let critical transportation infrastructure decay for want of a few extra bucks a year per person in gas taxes. Just a [...]
Whenever we Americans feel threatened we often react with a knee jerk and take our anger out on “others” while shrugging our shoulders at erosions and infringements on our Constitutionally protected freedoms in the name of security. We have a long history of treating immigrants badly, not to mention our horrid treatment of African Americans [...]
Those are not the only reasons that people write, but they are powerful motivators. I don’t believe that many people set out on the grueling task of writing a novel hoping that they will become “mute inglorious Miltons.” They hope to be known; they hope to be read.
And they hope, in the end, that being read they might quit their day jobs and write full time. Writing full time is not an easy row to hoe. It’s bloody hard work if you’re trying to do it clearly and well and day after d...
The TucsonCitizen.com is a community of bloggers. Belonging to such a community has both advantages and disadvantages and in the course of time The Data Port has belonged to three different communities.
The first was the Salon Blogs group, which is where I did my first blogging. The writers were pretty much what you might expect from a group of Salon readers. Softly leftish, literary, and as likely to post about poetry and music as about politics. For the most part the individual blogs were pr...
FOR IMMEDIATE NEWS RELEASE
Tucson Currently Ranked #1 in 2013 National Mayor’s Challenge
for Water ConservationWith less than two weeks remaining, residents of Tucson have kept the city in the top ten ranking in the 2013 National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation. Tucson was ranked #1 among cities with a population between 300,000 – 600,000 as of Friday, April 19.
The challenge, April 1-30, is a friendly non-profit competition that challenges U.S. city leaders to see wh...
In her epic shaming of the U.S. Senate in a column this week in the New York Times, former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords vowed to continue her struggle to change the nation’s gun laws. It’s a noble effort by a woman who not only knows the ways of the Congress but who tragically also knows [...]
On March 6, self employed Republican Mike Polak II filed his Statement of Organization with the Tucson City Clerk, with his intent to challenge one term Councilmember Richard Fimbres in Ward 5. He filed two amended statements thereafter.
Bio from Polak:
• The Boeing Company 1997 to 2012, Long Beach, CA & Tucson, AZ. Worked with Domestic and International Air lines companies. Supported Satellite launch operations and international transportation.
• McDonnell Douglas Long Beach, CA 1987 to...
Thinking back to the early web world I remember that there were no blogs, and community on the electronic frontier depended on mail lists. If you wanted to homestead there you depended on e-mail.
During my own tentative journeys on what was then being called the “information super highway” I found that personal web sites were rare. They required a good deal of technical knowledge and most newcomers simply lacked the skills necessary to code and maintain them.
The development of blogging pl...
The earliest example of The Data Port to which I have access is a post on the Blogger platform dated August 31, 2005. The subject was Gary Hart’s proposal for an Iraq settlement.
The settlement was to include, among other things:
Organizing a genuine international reconstruction program for Iraq with European and Asian contracting companies involved in competitive bidding for major infrastructure (water, waste management, transportation, communications, etc.) projects;
Establishing a Bank ...
If there is a lesson to be learned from Pima County Sewer War III it is that Marana is not interested in the benefits of regionalism. The Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a settlement with the town of Marana, officially ending PCSWIII. The settlement is technically a victory for Marana. It asserted in 2007 that [...]
Have you been to the doctor lately? Called your lawyer? Driven on a road? Walked into a multistory building? Used a cell phone? Read a blog online? Certainly you have. Nearly all of the people and things you rely on every day to make your life better, easier, healthier, safer or informative likely stem from [...]
Is Clean Elections dead in Arizona? Not yet, but if a bill, HB2593, currently hung up in the Legislature passes, Clean Elections will be as good as dead. And good riddance. Voter-approved Clean Elections was supposed to take the “dirty” money out of state politics by giving average Joes and Janes thousands of public dollars [...]
