ROLAND BRAMMEIER

Roland Brammeier, upon taking the helm of Tucson Metropolitan Ministries in 1975, reportedly said: “Three hymns and a prayer on Sunday morning is not the answer for churches.”

For the next decade, he showed Tucson what the answer should be.

Brammeier had attended Nebraska Wesleyan University and Iliff School of Theology in Denver and served churches in California and Arizona before coming to Tucson in 1971 as associate pastor to Catalina United Methodist Church.

He also had served on, created or led dozens of community programs: Highway Chaplain on Route 66 in Needles, Calif.; programs on mental health, Head Start, PTAs, adult education, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, Meals on Wheels, Board of Trustees for the ASU Student Union, the VISTA advisory board and many more.

His infectious joy and sense of humor – particularly laughing at himself – surely strengthened his ability to serve.

During his early years in ministry, he recalled walking through church one afternoon and looking in the John Wesley Lounge, where he found a nude couple making love.

He stammered, “Uh . . . uh, are you members here?” In unison, they replied, “No.” When sharing this story, he rhetorically asked, “Why did I ask them that?”

As Rev. Brammeier transitioned from pastor at Catalina UMC to becoming the first director of TMM, he worked with the YWCA (emblematic of his faith in action), at which time he is quoted as saying, “Ministers can speak the word all the time – but if they’re not acting the word, they’re in trouble.”

And act he did.

As he would say, TMM was a shared dream that came about by a wonderful team of volunteers and staff. It was “one of the WOWS in my life.”

Its task as the arm of the United Methodist Church was to be involved in everything that has anything to do with people in need, regardless of religious affiliation – or lack of it.

The multitude of services growing from his visionary leadership include four children’s day care centers, Community Food Bank, Community Organization for Personal Enrichment (COPE, begun as a place mental health outpatients meet and receive help with day-to-day problems), Senior Community Center, Urban Tours for awareness of needs, Indian Relief Center, Emergency Relief (cash assistance to families in need, which evolved into Traveler’s Aid , now part of the Primavera Foundation), Border Ministries, Miracle Square (independent living for senior and disabled adult with supportive services), Share Home Project (home sharing for seniors), Brewster Center for Women, now within Emerge Center.

Beyond direct leadership, Roland and TMM were interactive with more than 100 Tucson social service agencies. The list of his involvement in the community reads like a director of human services, but Roland would be the first to say he did not do these things; it was with the Tucson community these services and programs came into being.

Roland also took delight in helping the new arrivals, as when we arrived in Tucson in August 1977, in a Volkswagen bus with three kids, two dogs, no jobs nor home, and little cash in our pockets! He was our savior!

His walls were covered with awards and recognitions: Alumni Achievement Award from Nebraska Wesleyan, Outstanding Citizen of the Community by the National Association of Social Workers, Man of the Year by the Tucson Advertising Club, Bishop’s Award for Leadership, Iliff School of Theology Alumnus of the Year, Jefferson Award (a national recognition honoring community and public service), and many, many more.

Displayed among all those awards and certificates was a plaque with pictorial barbed-wire fence and the words, “He who straddles the fence usually has a sore crotch.”

That Nebraskan farm boy never, ever straddled fences.

Leaving Tucson in 1985, Roland accepted the position of district superintendent (essentially, a pastor to pastors) for the United Methodist Church in the Los Angeles area.

After four years, he returned to his native Nebraska. Ten years ago, he returned to Arizona to serve as pastor to the Lake View United Methodist Church in Sun City.

At the time of his death on March 29, 2009, he was continuing his activism working with United Methodist Outreach Ministries in downtown Phoenix.

After 10 years working in Mexico, Punch directed Tucson’s Community Food Bank for 25 years, retiring in 2003. He now volunteers with nonprofits and enjoys country life with wife Casey. E-mail: punchwoods@q.com

Punch Woods

An aerial view shows the Rio Nuevo site between "A" Mountain on the left and downtown Tucson on the right.

It’s May, and we’ve just broken the 100-degree mark in the Old Pueblo.

Our cement- and asphalt-laden streets and sidewalks won’t cool off for at least four months, and in the presumed absence of our once glorious “monsoon,” the riverbanks of the Rillito and Santa Cruz will remain barren and dry throughout the summer.

Upon returning to Tucson five years ago, I came to realize that our beautiful summer storms, known as “chubascos,” had all but disappeared.

In my absence, the blades of developers constantly eroded the desert as the octopus of Tucson grew in all directions: north, south, east and west.

Very little summer rain fell here for the first two years after I returned. “Where are they?” I asked, and the answer seemed to be that the rains were driven away by cement and asphalt, as had happened in the Gomorrah to our north, Phoenix.

In my previous incarnation in Tucson, I had always lived downtown.

As I returned in the midst of the real estate boom of 2004, I was surprised at the high cost of housing in the urban core.

However, I saw little improvement downtown to justify such exorbitant home prices.

Armory Park and “Barrio Historico” were still without even one grocery store; the streets were devoid of people; and businesses on Congress Street were boarded up.

The hopes for downtown redevelopment were being marketed in the form of a vague concept called “Rio Nuevo,” a euphemism, I imagined, for some kind of rebirth that would transform our downtown.

Alas, five years later I realize Rio Nuevo is thus far a dead-end street on the other side of a nonexistent Rainbow Bridge to Nowhere.

As the Santa Cruz is dried up and full of litter, Rio Nuevo would better be called Rio Seco (Dry River).

If we renamed Rio Nuevo to Rio Seco, we would understand that our desert is precious, and that it – and its people – must be protected.

Now buzzwords and concepts such as “sustainability” and “green jobs” are thrown around like wet dish towels in the kitchen of our collective mind, but what do these terms mean?

Sure rainwater harvesting is a good idea, but where is the rain?

Golf courses, resorts and roads continue to flourish while the water table sinks. Yet we call this “progress.”

We build border fences to keep out persons who are referred to as “illegals,” yet we historically have relied on such people to dig our trenches, mortar our bricks, harvest our crops and clean our toilets.

The border of our collective mind, which separates “illegals” from the rest of us, prevents us from seeing the future that could be.

Rather than accepting the reality of Rio Seco, we continue to wallow in the delusion of Rio Nuevo.

Rather than stopping expansive development in its tracks, we maintain that we can sustain life while perpetually bulldozing the desert.

Meanwhile, as state, county and city dollars shrink, our social safety net is vanishing.

Services for our most vulnerable – children, victims of abuse and domestic violence, the elderly, the mentally ill and the homeless – disappear daily as agency after agency must come to grips with reality and lay off workers.

In our desert, social Darwinism has met John Wayne: It is the “survival of the fittest” at the OK Corral.

Presumed “illegals” are told to “Go back to Mexico,” and the un- and underemployed are supposed to “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

By action or inaction, the mantra of our “leaders” in local and state government is: “Government cannot protect you; protect yourself!”

Yet how can we expect the homeless, persons with serious mental illness, survivors/victims of domestic violence, the elderly, children who live below the poverty line, and single mothers struggling to make ends meet in a depressed economy to “make it” without help?

Seemingly, no public funds are available for social programs, but no one is seriously talking about how much money we waste – on the state, county and city levels, on locking up people for relatively low-level crimes.

In the jails and prisons of our collective mind, no one discusses concepts such as “smart policing” and “community corrections.”

Studies have repeatedly shown that police patrols are ineffective in deterring and preventing crime, yet we continue to throw good money after bad.

We do business the way it’s always been done because that is what we are told to do.

There is no creative thinking in public safety land, where jails, prisons and law enforcement are budgetary “sacred cows.”

In the borders of our collective mind, rather than making better use of jail and prison space, we simply assume more is needed.

It is time to take care of people in our midst, to “just say no” to developers, to eliminate “corporate welfare” and to turn off the spigot of endless public dollars designated for nonessential law enforcement services and the unnecessary incarceration of nonviolent offenders.

It is time to create innovative programs that can save taxpayers’ money and serve the needy.

It is time to cut the fat from bloated bureaucracies while stabilizing the humanitarian core of government.

Embrace the concept of Rio Seco, and cast off the delusion of Rio Nuevo!

Michael C. Elsner, Ph.D., teaches sociology and criminology/criminal justice for Northern Arizona University-Tucson and is a principal research specialist with the University of Arizona’s College of Public Health.

Michael C. Elsner

From the political notebook:

• The always gloomy report of the Social Security and Medicare trustees was released last week. The news focus was that the date for the Social Security trust fund to go broke had been moved up to 2037.

That, however, isn’t the relevant economic date. The relevant date is when annual income begins to fall short of annual expenses.

It is true that both Social Security and Medicare have IOUs from the federal treasury for the surpluses that have been being used for other purposes. But the government will have to raise the money to make good on the IOUs. That means higher taxes, more borrowing, or cuts in other programs.

The Medicare hospitalization fund is already running an annual deficit. For Social Security, annual expenses are expected to exceed annual income in 2016, just seven years from now.

Very shortly, the Social Security surpluses the government is currently using for other purposes will start to decline, beginning the pressure on the general fisc.

After they have come to an end in 2016, the amount the government will have to pump into Social Security and Medicare from sources other than payroll taxes will be small at first.

But it grows pretty quickly. By 2025, it is expected to reach over $500 billion a year.

The day of reckoning for Social Security and Medicare reform is fast approaching.

• Given the circumstances, the fix Legislative Republicans adopted as, they hope, the final tourniquet for this fiscal year, which ends in June, is excusable.

Primarily, they pushed bills due this year into next. Ordinarily, that would be outrageous. But the fall in state revenues has been so deep that it’s hard to work up a lather over any temporizing measures.

Democrats voted almost unanimously against the fix, even though they have recommended postponing payments as a strategy as well.

They objected to a provision requiring school districts to first use excess cash balances to cover their costs in lieu of actually getting their deferred payment next year. But the Democratic argument makes no sense.

School districts have been banking reserves beyond what they can legally spend. These excesses are supposed to be used to reduce property taxes the following year.

So, Democrats complained that using them to reduce what the state actually ends up forking out for its deferred payment to the schools amounted to a property tax increase.

However, the evidence is overwhelming that the districts have not been using excess cash balances to reduce property taxes.

According to the Arizona Tax Research Association, districts have more than doubled their cash balances over the last five years, from $219 million to $443 million.

Moreover, Democrats support reimposing a property tax at the state level. Why cavil at an increase at the local level?

• The lone exception to Democratic opposition came from Sen. Minority Leader Jorge Luis Garcia. He pointed out that using the excess cash balances now reserved more federal stimulus money to offset potential education cuts later. And he’s exactly right.

Independent thinking and actions are rare in politics. Garcia is to be commended for his.

• I attended President Obama’s commencement address at Arizona State University, not as a journalist but as a parent of a graduating student.

A few years ago, I also attended a graduation ceremony at Wells Fargo Arena. The latter was significantly less of a pain in the patoot, but I was struck by the same conclusion: This was a ceremony for the university, not the students.

Yes, my son will remember that Obama spoke at his graduation. And Obama gave a fine commencement address.

But my son petitioned us to get out of there even before his degree was officially conferred by having his college stand up and have a few words of incantation recited by ASU’s president.

There is only one moment that really matters to students and family at these things. That’s when the student’s name is called and he gets to tread across the stage while his clan hoots and hollers. At ASU, there are simply too many graduates to provide the main moment.

This big mega-ritual should be done away with at ASU. Have graduation ceremonies at the school level. Eliminate all the academic folderol and get right to the name-calling, treading and hooting and hollering.

Done right, the thing shouldn’t take more than an hour. And it would be much easier on aging patoots.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Francisco Peña contemplates a math problem at an AIMS workshop at Pueblo High Magnet School.

After many years as a political observer and erstwhile practitioner, I usually understand why what I think is sensible policy doesn’t get enacted.

Often, there is some interest group opposed. In our political system, intensity matters. An organized group that cares a lot can usually carry the day against policies whose benefits are diffuse.

Our political system also is set up to make big reforms difficult. Incremental change at the margins is more the norm. And usually, that’s a good thing.

And not at all infrequently, my views are in the minority, and not infrequently a very small minority at that.

Nevertheless, the failure of policy to move in the direction I think sensible about a high school graduation test in Arizona perplexes me. It doesn’t disadvantage any organized interest group. It’s not that big of a reform. And I think most people would agree with me, although I might be wrong about that.

Nevertheless, Arizona’s high school graduation test remains stuck in a place that makes no sense, and reform efforts, to the extent they are gaining traction, move in the wrong direction.

Arizona has a high school graduation test, AIMS, that all students must pass to receive their diploma (ignoring the temporizing fudging mechanisms the Legislature has adopted and extended).

However, the test doesn’t really determine whether a student knows what a high school graduate is expected to know. Instead, it is set at a 10th grade level.

So, Arizona can be relatively confident that its high school graduates know what a sophomore in high school should know. Wouldn’t it make more sense to determine if they know what a high school graduate should know?

I think Arizona should have a high school exit exam that actually tests what high school graduates should know. If passage were made a graduation requirement, however, the failure rate would be, at least at first, politically unacceptably high.

So, I’ve proposed a two-tier diploma: a certificate of achievement, representing passage of the test; and a certificate of completion, representing passage of all other graduation requirements but failure to pass the exit exam.

No one would be denied graduation because of the test. But employers and universities could place appropriately differential value on the two diplomas.

An AIMS Task Force formed by the Legislature recently released its recommendations. It said, much to my surprise, that AIMS should remain a 10th grade test and should remain a graduation requirement. However, it should be supplemented by two “college and career readiness” tests in the freshman and junior years.

Now, that would mean that there would still be no way of knowing whether an Arizona high school graduate actually knows what a high school graduate should know.

The desire for new “college and career readiness” tests issues from two growing fallacies.

First, that all students should graduate high school ready for college. Second, that what is necessary to prepare for college is the same thing as is necessary for jobs that don’t require a college degree.

If college is to be what it should be, and not just the new high school, then it should require cognitive abilities and a keen interest in hard academic work that just isn’t universal. And the math skills that an aspiring plumber or carpenter needs just aren’t the same as for an aspiring physicist or economist.

This is an overreaction to the commendable desire not to prematurely track kids, and particularly to avoid lower expectations for low-income and minority students.

But there are plenty of college readiness tests that already exist, and the entry requirements for Arizona universities are not opaque. Avoiding low-expectations is a matter of exhortation, not new tests.

Arizona does, however, need a high school graduation test that actually tests high school graduate knowledge.

Getting one shouldn’t be this difficult.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

No matter what you think of Dick Cheney, you can't say he hasn't warned you.

The Republican Party is a lot like the American auto industry these days. It’s in shambles, but something has got to survive.

The problem is that Dick Cheney, who seemingly has granted more interviews in the last eight weeks than he did in the previous eight years, is obscuring this rebuilding effort.

The former vice president’s message may be worth hearing. But Cheney is viewed so negatively that the messenger is crowding out the message. Some of Cheney’s critics seem to loathe him more than they do Osama bin Laden.

What does Cheney want? Some speculate he’s trying to polish his and George W. Bush’s legacy before it gets burned into history, especially the part about interrogation and intelligence gathering.

Cheney’s stated motive is that he is speaking out now because he is deeply worried that President Obama is replacing Bush administration policies with those that will make the country less safe.

That’s a debate worth having.

Obama last week changed his mind and decided not to release hundreds of photos of prisoner treatment in Afghanistan and Iraq after U.S. military leaders said they feared it would endanger U.S. troops.

In stark contrast to the Bush’s deep-in-the-heart-of-Texas retreat, Cheney has been highly visible and highly critical of the new administration.

If he were an automobile, he’d be the kind they had back in the 1970s when the U.S. auto industry was king, when the Japanese were a minor threat, and the Russians were building fall-apart death trap vehicles behind the Iron Curtain.

The Cheney Charger makes no apologies for the rubber it lays or the dust it leaves. It doesn’t try to appeal to everyone, but if you need to run into or over something to protect yourself, that’s the showroom you’d be in.

Liberal columnists believe this Cheney is crazy-dangerous. Comedians see a big target.

At the recent star-studded White House Correspondents’ Dinner – the Oscars for the bicoastal “Pollywood” set – comedian Wanda Sykes proclaimed: “He’s a scary man, scares me to death. I tell my kids . . . ‘If two cars pull up and one has a stranger and the other car has Dick Cheney . . . you get in the car with the stranger.’ ”

Democrats delight in making Cheney a face of the GOP’s shambled state, and the vice president keeps giving them YouTube moments.

Just last weekend, Cheney was on CBS’ “Face the Nation” explaining why he had been so visible.

“If I don’t speak out,” Cheney said, “then the critics have free run, and there isn’t anybody on the other side to tell the truth.”

So what if Cheney is right? What if, as he says, the tactics the Bush administration used to extract information from suspected terrorists saved hundreds of thousands of American lives?

A former FBI interrogator who questioned terrorist suspects testified this week at a Senate hearing that extreme techniques were unreliable and counter-productive.

Cheney says unreleased CIA memos would back up his claim. Let’s see them.

His critics point to already released CIA memos that say there is no way of knowing whether the same information couldn’t have been gotten with milder tactics. But what if they are wrong?

What if, heaven forbid, terrorists pull off another mass-casualty attack on an American city? Who gets the blame?

Will it be the Bush-Cheney crowd for fuzzying the definition of torture and engaging in waterboarding and other interrogation methods that may or may not have been legal, thereby incubating more anti-Americanism in the jihadist sphere?

Or will it be the Obama crowd for peeling back those policies and leaving the public impression that detention got easier for anyone caught trying to do mass-scale harm?

No matter what you think of Dick Cheney, you can’t say he hasn’t warned you.

Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com

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Raasch’s blog

Get more behind-the-scenes reports, context and analysis about politicians and the political process in Raasch’s Furthermore blog. Look for it here.

Bishop John Tong smiles in front of Catholic Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Hong Kong. The new head of Hong Kong's Catholic church is promising to help unite China's Catholics and work toward religious freedom. Tong assumed his role as head of Hong Kong's diocese in April. He replaced the long-serving Joseph Zen, an outspoken champion of religious liberty who was mistrusted by Beijing.

At a time when religious persecution is at the heart of the world’s most violent conflicts, religious freedom matters.

That’s why the 2009 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom should be required reading for policymakers in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

The report, released May 1, documents in chilling detail the global assault on freedom of religion and belief, making a powerful case for the need to take religious freedom more seriously in U.S. foreign policy.

The report doesn’t come from the left or the right. It comes from a federal commission that is independent and bipartisan under the leadership of 10 commissioners who did their homework.

This year, the commission names 13 “countries of particular concern” – Burma, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedom.

Another 11 countries are on the commission’s watch list: Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.

The worst of the worst include China, where unregistered Protestants are frequently arrested, Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned and tortured, Catholics are detained and harassed, and Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists are repressed in growing numbers.

Conditions are less severe, but still serious, in “watch list” countries. Venezuela, for example, is now a hotbed of anti-Semitism fomented by the anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions of the government under President Hugo Chavez. As a consequence, many Jews have fled the country.

Religious freedom is practically nonexistent in Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States with a long history of promising, but failing, to do better.

Members of minority Muslim groups – including Shiites, who make up 10 percent to 15 percent of the population – are frequently detained and harassed.

Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and others among the nearly three million expatriate workers must conform to Saudi religious customs.

Although non-Muslim workers are supposed to be permitted to worship in private, their services are often subject to surveillance and raids by Saudi authorities.

Just about every religious group, it seems, suffers persecution somewhere in the world today. Christians are targeted in Iraq, Baha’is are arrested in Iran, Jehovah’s Witnesses are banned in Tajikistan, Muslims suffer discrimination in Russia, and the list goes on.

Beyond delivering bad news, the commission also makes extensive policy recommendations to the Obama administration and Congress, including asking the secretary of state to designate “countries of particular concern.”

Under the International Religious Freedom Act, the president is required to take action opposing violations of religious freedom in countries so designated.

Given the complex economic and political realities of American ties with some of the worst offenders, religious freedom and other human rights issues often take a back seat in U.S. foreign policy. Saudi Arabia, for example, has been a CPC since 2004 – but a State Department waiver lets the Saudis off the hook.

Even in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where the U.S. is deeply involved in nation-building, conditions for freedom of religion and belief continue to deteriorate.

A strong case can be made that the lack of religious freedom is one of the greatest barriers to peace and security in both societies.

We ignore this global crisis at our peril. Consider the hard reality behind the idealism that animates the commission’s report: International religious freedom is both an issue of national security for the United States and an essential condition for building societies that are free and democratic.

Assaults on freedom of religion and belief aren’t side issues; they are urgent matters of conscience that must be at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

Charles C. Haynes is senior scholar at the First Amendment Center (www.firstamendmentcenter.org). E-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org

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FULL REPORT

To read the full 2009 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom go to: www.uscirf.gov

The clock is ticking on the Obama administration’s promises to speed development of the next generation of biofuels.

There isn’t a commercial-scale plant making ethanol from crop residue and other types of plant cellulose, the stuff that’s supposed to replace corn as the feedstock of the future for biofuels.

Biomass fuel isn’t economical yet, and there are obstacles to overcome, including how to harvest, transport and store the huge amounts of biomass required.

But biorefineries will have to be built at a relatively fast rate in the coming decade if there will be sufficient quantities to meet congressional-imposed mandates, according to an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency.

By 2013, 10 plants, each capable of producing 40 million gallons a year, would need to be built.

By 2018, the industry needs 20 such plants a year, each with an average annual production capacity of 100 million gallons.

That’s the pace needed to produce 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel by 2022, the consumption level Congress required in the 2007 energy bill.

It can’t be done, given the lack of available capital and relatively low oil prices that the industry faces, said Robert Brown, director of Iowa State University’s Bioeconomy Institute.

The mandate “was ambitious even when petroleum was selling for $150 a barrel and money was available for new technologies,” he said.

The environmental agency analysis provides a look at where cellulosic plants would be, based on where the cornfield residue, forestry waste and other feedstocks are likely to be.

Iowa, with its expanse of corn production, is likely to be the No. 1 producer in cellulosic ethanol in 2022, according to the agency’s forecast.

The agency sees Iowa producing 1.7 billion gallons a year of cellulosic ethanol, ahead of Illinois, Indiana and Louisiana. (Iowa’s corn ethanol plants can now produce about 3.3 billion gallons a year, and the environmental agency sees that capacity rising to 3.8 billion gallons by 2022.)

For now, the question isn’t so much where they will be built, but when, or even whether they’ll be built.

Getting the industry started will require heavy federal financing in the form of loan guarantees, said Brooke Coleman, executive director of the New Fuels Alliance, an advocacy group for next-generation biofuels.

A cellulosic ethanol plant would cost an estimated $5 to $7 per gallon of capacity to build, compared with $1 to $2 a gallon for a corn ethanol facility.

“If the government wants to do this, they’re going to have to stand back and say, ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll help you out,’ ” Coleman said.

The Obama administration last week pledged to accelerate the use of loan guarantees to refinance existing plants and build cellulosic facilities.

One reason investors don’t want to finance plants is the lack of cars capable of running on ethanol and the lack of pumps for dispensing the fuel.

“The Obama administration has to realize that they’re running their (biofuels) train into what is a wall in the marketplace,” Coleman said.

Coleman said the attention that policymakers are giving to problems in the corn ethanol industry are deflecting attention from advanced biofuels and delaying their introduction.

There’s one way around some of these obstacles: Burn the biomass in power plants and use the electricity to run plug-in hybrid cars rather than turning the biomass into ethanol.

A recent study published in the journal Science says cars would get 80 percent more mileage per acre of biomass when it’s used to generate electricity than making ethanol. And greenhouse gas emissions are lower because electric motors are more efficient than internal combustion engines.

Philip Brasher is a reporter for The Des Moines (Iowa) Register. E-mail: pbrasher@dmreg.com

Tucson as viewed through the eyes of Tucson Citizen Staff Artist Arnie Bermudez and his alter ego, Carlos the Coyote.

To learn more about Carlos, go to his Myspace page:http://www.myspace.com/carloscoyote

(abermudez@tucsoncitizen.com)

E-mail Arnie Bermudez at: abermudez@tucsoncitizen.com

Without steps to curb global warming, plants, animals we need for food, drugs will vanish

This saguaro, standing like a sentinel in silhouette, is among the "iconic, charismatic mega flora" that could be endangered by climate change, says a scientific panel's recent report.

Friday marked the third annual national Endangered Species Day, a day set aside to recognize our nation’s efforts to safeguard our rarest fish, wildlife and plants.

But this year, one fact is clear: Global warming is changing everything we know about protecting wildlife and natural resources.

Luckily, thanks to U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva and other members of Congress, we also have an opportunity to finally tackle global warming and ensure that our wildlife heritage is protected for future generations of Americans.

In our warming world, habitats around the globe are shrinking and being destroyed while plants and wildlife are forced to adapt, migrate – or perish.

While the iconic polar bear gets most of the press, few species are immune, and many are in peril – including Arizona’s trademark saguaro cactus.

A recent report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program warns that due to the warming climate “. . . the probability of loss of iconic, charismatic mega flora such as saguaro cacti and Joshua trees will greatly increase.”

The world-class scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change have summed up the challenge in stark figures:

Without strong, rapid action to address global warming, 20 to 30 percent of the world’s plant and animal species will be at increased risk of extinction.

Stopping extinction is more than the right thing to do – it’s the smart thing to do. By safeguarding wildlife and natural resources, we keep our communities healthy and sustainable.

We all depend on diverse eco-systems for many life-sustaining services. These “ecosystem services” help produce and maintain clean water and air, and supply a variety of foods and medicines.

In arid Arizona, for example, our water flows in part from the healthy forest ecosystems along the Mogollon Rim and in the White Mountains.

Birds and insects pollinate our crops at no cost – just imagine what it would cost to do this by hand!

Wildlife activity are not only essential for our well-being, but also are an enormous boon to our economy.

According to the newest National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation, 87.5 million Americans spent more than $122 billion in 2006 on wildlife-related recreation.

This spending supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. In Arizona, for example, it is estimated that hunting and fishing contribute $1.3 billion to the state’s economy each year.

We rely upon nature, and nature relies upon us. But we need to act fast to make sure that we don’t lose our wildlife and the natural resources we all depend upon.

By taking steps to curb our nation’s carbon pollution, we begin the transition to a sustainable green economy by lifting the burden off taxpayers and placing it squarely upon the polluting industries responsible for causing global warming.

But there is more to be done. Comprehensive climate and energy legislation must also include funding and strategies specifically aimed at safeguarding our wildlife and natural resources.

Grijalva has recently introduced a bill, the Climate Change Safeguards for Natural Resources Conservation Act of 2009 (HR 2192), that will help bolster the resilience of natural ecosystems in the face of global warming.

The legislation would create strong, coordinated national and state plans to put the best possible tools and strategies in the hands of state, federal and tribal land managers.

The bill would also boost scientific capacity to ensure that management decisions are informed by the best available science and monitoring.

Of course, it’s vital that Grijalva’s bill be backed with enough funding to do the job right.

Congress should dedicate 5 percent of the total revenues generated by a federal climate program to safeguard wildlife and ecosystems in a warming world.

It’s a small investment to ensure that the world we leave our children is as close as possible to the one that we have been fortunate enough to inherit.

The phrase “extinction is forever” is a potent reminder of what we have to lose and what must be done.

We all rely on nature for survival, so we must strengthen our efforts to address the negative impacts of global warming.

When we reduce pollution that contributes to global warming and invest in ways to safeguard nature and wildlife, we are not only helping nature, we are helping ourselves.

Scotty Johnson, a native Arizonan and Tucson resident, is the senior outreach representative for Defenders of Wildlife – a national conservation organization. For more information about the effects of climate change on wildlife and natural resources, see the Defenders’ new report “Beyond Cutting Emissions” at www.defenders.org.

Scotty Johnson

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ON THE WEB

Climate Change Safeguards for Natural Resources Conservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 2192): tinyurl.com/qv3wum

Job always stayed fun because of staff

I can’t complain. It was a good run. There aren’t many people who have the opportunity to do what they truly love and to do it in one place for 34 years.

That’s how my career went at the Tucson Citizen – from Dec. 16, 1974, until May 15, 2009.

Some of you I will miss. Others, not so much.

At the top of the “miss” list are the people I work with. The job has been fun mostly because the people have been fun.

These pages wouldn’t be here without Billie Stanton. She’s to my right today, but in reality, she isn’t to the right of anyone. She’s impassioned and would right every wrong in the world if she had the time.

In the four months since we first were threatened with closure, we’ve know that there are a lot of people who care.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas was one of the first to call and say he was thinking of us. There also have been legislators and former legislators, City Council members and former council members and many others.

But what touched me most were the kind notes from those of you I have never met. Most offered words of support and said how much they will miss us.

Typical was a comment left online yesterday by a reader I know only as rubysky: “I hope the staffers are OK. These are our neighbors and fellow citizens.”

Others had different concerns.

I was slightly hurt when one caller was more concerned about Brenda Starr’s future than mine. How, the reader wondered, would she be able to keep up with the red-haired reporter?

I resisted telling her that Brenda was fictional and I was real and she should be a little more concerned about my future.

Oh, well. Good luck, Brenda.

I also won’t miss those people who have called or e-mailed almost every day over the past four months to point at something in the paper they didn’t like, saying, “This story is why you are closing.”

Some said it’s because we’re too liberal, some say it’s because we run too many conservative Cal Thomas screeds.

One even said we were gonna close because we ran a short story on Martha’s Stewart puppy being accidentally killed in a kennel.

I actually think the reasons were bigger than that, but who knows?

I also won’t miss the guy who called every Feb. 6 to castigate us for not running a front-page story reminding people it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday. And what would the second sentence of the story have been?

It’s been fun, this journalism business. Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

Contact Mark Kimble at mskimble@cox.net.

After more than five years at the Tucson Citizen, I still feel like the new kid on the block.

Some of our core content creators – the “deciders” – have been here three decades or more, and their institutional memory and regional knowledge have served this community very well indeed.

You know that guy to my left here, the Micky Mouse afficionado of “Arizona Illustrated” fame.

Mark Kimble and I have kitty-corner offices behind the newsroom, where we call out questions and quips without leaving our seats.

We’ve entertained and irritated one another repeatedly, but he steadfastly has defended me against the savages, and our teamwork has been a blast.

Kimble has been a good boss. He’s been an even better journalist. He came to the Tucson Citizen 34 years ago, and we all know the Citizen wouldn’t have made it this far without his wit and wisdom.

This Little Afternoon Daily That Could likewise would have derailed long ago if not for two men working in relative obscurity.

Joel Rochon got here 36 years ago, and I’ve long regarded him as the real brains behind this operation. (If only Gannett would have listened!)

Joel is a brilliant and talented artist and designer, an expert with technology, a supplies and budgeting guru, a visionary about the newspaper business and a people person who wisely dispenses free chocolate with encouragement and support.

I love him to pieces.

Paul Schwalbach can put panache on the most pedantic prose. With two big words and a carefully chosen photo or two, he’ll put a full page into focus.

But that’s just the technical stuff. He’s also a highly sophisticated political and social observer and one of the funniest, warmest human beings with whom I’ve had the privilege to work. (Scarecrow, I think I’ll miss you most of all.)

These three astute editors are the unheralded infrastructure of the Tucson Citizen.

Thanks to them, I’ve been free to lambaste violent racists, skewer mean-spirited conservatives, cheer on the No More Deaths crowd, support and honor our veterans, promote the public school system that makes our democratic society possible, push for the election of President Obama and, in general, annoy a whole lot of nattering nabobs of negativism. (Sorry, Spiro.)

This puts the period on my 30-year career. Most of it was spent in Colorado and Florida, but I started at the Arizona Daily Wildcat, so it’s appropriate that it ends in Tucson, too.

I’ve enjoyed making a contribution here, but others have committed their entire professional lives to this paper. I salute them. And to all you faithful readers, thank you.

Send job offers to billiestanton@gmail.com.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Arizona’s oldest continuously published newspaper will hit Tucson newsstands and doorsteps for the last time on May 16.

As a longtime reader of the Tucson Citizen, I think I speak for many when I say the paper’s closure will be like saying goodbye to an old, trusted friend.

What a friend it has been. The Citizen already was 11 years old when it told us about Wyatt Earp’s shootout at the OK Corral in 1881. It had been around 42 years when Arizona became a state in 1912. And when the city of Tucson celebrated its bicentennial in 1975, the Citizen had a 105-year record of reporting behind it.

Tucson will be very different without the Citizen. Our community will have one fewer voice, one fewer watchdog, one fewer place to go for the news we need to understand our increasingly complex world.

Many believe that, as an afternoon newspaper, the Citizen’s days have long been numbered. Perhaps, but the loss of the Citizen is emblematic of a far more troubling trend. The entire newspaper industry is struggling as never before, thanks in part to a seismic shift in how we get our news.

Today the Internet, not the daily newspaper, serves as our window to the world.

For news junkies and avid newspaper readers, this is a truly sad turn of events. I count myself among this shrinking community.

Sure, going online is fast and handy. But old school types love newspapers – we love holding them, with a cup of coffee at hand, and learning about what has happened in our neighborhood, city, state and country.

Some of us – the real die-hards – even like comparing competing articles and editorials on the same subject among rival newspapers. Tucson was one of the few cities where this was possible; ours was one of the last two-newspaper towns left in America.

With the demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News in Denver over the past month, Tucson is by no means alone in having to rely on one newspaper. That, however, is little comfort. Competition is a good thing for newspapers, as it is for any business.

Having two newspapers fostered a competitive spirit that allowed the Tucson Citizen and Arizona Daily Star to bring out the best in each another. Reporters, editors and photographers at each of our papers wanted to scoop the other guy. In that race, readers were the winners.

Since 1870, the Citizen has kept southern Arizonans informed. We didn’t always agree with an editorial position or like the angle of a news story, yet we kept reading.

We needed the Citizen. Sometimes we needed it to figure out a City Council decision. Sometimes we needed it to tell us how the Wildcats did. And sometimes we just needed it to tell us when movies began at The Loft.

The point is, the Citizen was there for us.

From the era of the Butterfield Overland Stage to the Phoenix Mars Mission, the Citizen helped chronicle Arizona’s amazing journey from a rough and tumble territory to the second-fastest growing state in the country.

It was an indispensable part of our community. It educated us, entertained us and inspired us. It will be missed.

Goodbye, dear friend.

Gabrielle Giffords is a member of the U.S. House representing Tucson and southern Arizona.

Gerald Garcia

The Tucson Citizen: readable, likable, my friend, the intelligent choice. The Citizen was my first publisher’s position. It is where I got my feet wet – and my underwear and pants, too, the day the pressroom blew up.

It has been more than 20 years since I departed my beloved Citizen. It was a difficult decision: Stay at the Citizen and Tucson or return to College Station, Texas, to parents, grandparents, Texas A&M, Aggie football. To Texas we went.

I have missed the Citizen from that day.

I remember the heyday of great journalism at the Citizen, some of the best, if not the best, that I have been associated with.

A couple that stand out:

• From Guatemala to Madison, Wis., the so-called Underground Railroad, an undertaking of enormous proportions by dedicated Citizen staff members who chopped their way through the jungles of Guatemala, the jungle of streets in Mexico City, the treacherous mountains and jungle of back roads in northern Mexico, crossing the border undetected through a jungle of tunnels with guides and political refugees and reaching safe houses in Tucson, northern Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Illinois and Wisconsin.

• The New Pueblo, a moving account of life in Tucson.

In describing The New Pueblo to our readers, I wrote, “It explains life as life itself rather than a metaphor of life. . . . The New Pueblo tells us about Tucson’s early years, how we progressed to the present and about our future.”

The New Pueblo was mountains of research. It was sending reporters to San Jose, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; and Phoenix. It was interviewing countless residents of Tucson, its leaders – elected or otherwise, discussing opportunities and formulating consensus about the future of our beloved “Old Pueblo.”

And, while the projects were important and something to behold and be proud of, it was the reporters, the people (the faces) of the Citizen that I ultimately remember.

Mark Kimble, Mr. Reliable; Chuck Bowden, he could make a subject and a predicate sing; Dale Walton, the managing editor for the ages; Judy Carlock, Miss Steady Hand; Carla McClain, if it was a medical issue, she had the cure.

Douglas Kreutz, a reporter’s reporter; Joel Rochon, he could take a drawing and bring it to life; P.K. Weis, the lens of his camera found the perfect image; Julie Szekely, she could dress you up and get it for you at the least cost.

Corky Simpson, who could take you from a screen pass to a bounce pass with a flick of the keyboard; Jeff Smith, talented, eccentric and way too out there for my taste; and the many other faces of the Citizen who made my job easier, my work pleasant and my life fulfilled.

Then, there is Tucson: majestic and magnificent. The memories: vivid, like yesterday.

The Tucson Mountains. The Valley. Some 320 days a year of crystal-clear, blue skies. The Dove of the Desert. Saguaros. The unrelenting heat of summer.

Skiing Mount Lemmon on a wintry Saturday morning and taking a swim in the backyard pool that afternoon. Brilliant sunsets, the most powerful anywhere. The desert, indescribable, fearful and fearless.

The Ball Busters, my Sunday morning golf group, which leads to the people – the faces – of Tucson:

Joel Valdez, a gentleman’s gentleman; Dick Moreno, fun-loving; Jim Click, wheel and deal, with a heart of gold; Warren Rustand, brilliant and savvy.

Mary Peachin, poised, glamorous and art to spare; Edith Auslander, compromising, negotiating, but always getting it right; and the many others who touched my life and influenced it forever.

I am saddened that the Citizen will be shuttered and a golden era of southern Arizona journalism will pass. I am saddened that Tucson is losing its friend, its intelligent choice.

To my friends in Tucson, I bid you a continued great adventure in the New Pueblo. To the Citizen, with tears in my eyes, I say “30.”

Gerald Garcia Jr. is president and CEO of AIMS Worldwide Inc., based in Fairfax, Va. E-mail: ggarcia@aimsworldwide.com

C. Donald Hatfield

In 1986, the Gannett Co., owner of the Tucson Citizen, asked me to come to Tucson as editor and publisher. I was then editor and publisher of the Huntington (W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch, also a Gannett paper.

I was eager to make the move even though my wife, Sandy, and I would be leaving family and coming to a city we had never seen and where we knew no one. I promised her we would return East to family in four years max.

We stayed for more than 21.

Fourteen of those years were spent with the Citizen, until my retirement in June 2000. And they were very special years.

The Citizen was not a newspaper that needed to be “fixed” when I arrived. It was an excellent paper with a solid reputation and, as the oldest newspaper in Arizona, an outstanding history.

It had won prizes, produced top-notch investigative stories and harbored many outstanding writers. Its staff possessed, I thought, a rare feeling for the culture of the community it served. It showed in their work.

Newsrooms are a strange conglomeration of diverse individuals of different backgrounds and contrasting views, some with huge egos, some quite unassuming.

They’re made up of talented and creative people who enjoy their work, though most won’t admit it, and they tend to be an irreverent bunch. Despite their differences, they have one wonderful thing in common: They want to find out what’s going on and tell readers about it.

That’s the kind of news staff I found at the Citizen.

We thought of ourselves as the local-emphasis newspaper, the paper that cared most about Tucson. Our motto was, “The Citizen IS Tucson,” and one of our promotions remarked “If you care about Tucson, you have to read the Citizen.”

We covered the local scene like no one else. We expanded our coverage of the arts, sports, business and of what were then referred to as “minorities.”

We held neighborhood meetings to find out what people were thinking and town meetings for teenagers.

We revealed to readers the problems of a cracking Hoover Dam and the crowded unregulated skies over the Grand Canyon. We followed the Arizona Wildcats.

We interviewed the known and the unknown. We met with legends and heroes – think Mo Udall and John McCain.

I cannot tell you what it was like to look up from my desk one of my first days on the job to see Udall, who had come by to welcome me to Arizona. And I enjoyed getting to know McCain as more than a senator and future presidential hopeful.

And Sen. Dennis DeConcini, with whose family my wife and I became close friends.

It was special to know many of those who contributed so much to the community in so many ways – people like Roy Drachman and Jim Click as well as Ray Clarke, Fred Acosta and Lorraine Lee, to name just a few.

I like to think we put out some very good newspapers, that we were strong but fair, respected even when criticized, and that we were a valuable part of people’s lives.

I also like to think we had fun doing it. I know I did.

Serving as the Citizen’s editor and publisher was an honor. And living in Tucson was truly a blessing. It was and is a special place.

And we made special friends. Allen Beigel. Joan Kaye Cauthorn. Drs. John and Helen Schaefer. Stanley and Norma Feldman. So many others. We cannot imagine never having known them.

I have thought a lot about the Citizen since my retirement: the challenges that were faced, the stories that were published – some tough, some touching – the good days and the bad. Now the Citizen’s final chapter is being written. And there is great sadness in its passing. Nobody wants to see a newspaper die, especially this one. For it signals the end of an era, and it creates a void in the community that will not be filled.

But I can tell you that all those who have worn the Citizen’s colors can look back with great pride.

Gracias, Citizen staffers throughout the years. Gracias, Tucson.

Don Hatfield is retired and lives in Huntington, W.Va. E-mail: cdhatfield@comcast.net

Michael A. Chihak

We are as ill-prepared for newspapering’s demise as we were for economic meltdown. An odd comparison, perhaps, because we will recover from economic arrhythmia in relatively short time. Replacing the role of newspapers will take longer, and that threatens democracy.

Newspapers are democracy’s bulwark: constitutionally protected watchdogs. The Founding Fathers knew a free press would sustain democracy so included it among the Constitution’s foremost rights.

The Tucson Citizen’s death and the demise of other newspapers shake the frame upon which democracy sits. Without free-flowing information, the experiment Lincoln defined as “of . . . by . . . for the people” will not endure.

We inherited the right to self-govern, and keeping a check on those who presume to act for us is how we do so. Newspapers are the best at shining light on government.

The Citizen did it for nearly 139 years. Its death and the casting of its fine staff members into the economic diaspora are heartbreaking.

Saying newspapers brought it upon themselves is largely true, but not for the reason you think. Slant – perceived or real – isn’t a factor; newspapers of all political stripe are failing. Business avarice and arrogant resistance to change lead the blame list.

Retrospection hardly seems worthwhile, but please permit a bit of it. In the latter half of my more than three decades in newspapering, we emphasized business rather than news, boastful of being the only business mentioned in the Constitution.

That missed the point, because while newspaper owners made money, their primacy was to inform, watchdog, nurture democratic ideals and drive stakes into the hearts of faulty notions.

We changed for business. Now newspapering’s breathing is shallow and rattling.

New technologies turned newspapering into a piece of glass, dropping it to the ground to shatter. Newspaper bosses tried putting the pieces back together rather than recognizing each piece as a new opportunity. Now it’s too late.

Mass migration to millions of other information forums and the economic implosion are sending newspapers to death row. Don’t count on midnight pardons.

This threatens us because other forums are not yet able to support democracy – that is, self-government – the way newspapers have.

What Tucson TV newsroom, radio station or blogger will consistently watchdog local institutions? Even at its lowest level of staffing, the Citizen had Tucson’s second-largest number of reporters poking into the goings-on of public entities, more than the combined reporting staffs at local TV and radio stations, weekly publications and news blogs.

The Citizen has been part of the framework supporting democracy. Its demise threatens democratic balance, because other media entities don’t have the resources to pick up the slack, at least not yet.

Some say bloggers, tweeters and easy-to-dislike radio and cable talkers already have replaced newspapers. Don’t be deluded. The information frontier is still like the Wild West. Having the loudest opinion is de rigueur; possessing the facts is passé. Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly compete for narcissist of the week; Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann claim the market on fatuousness. They all have local counterparts, peddling exaggerations and distortions without checks or filters.

Millions buy in, affirming another Lincolnism: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time . . . ”

The contract we inherited as free Americans requires us to live up to the rest of his observation: ” . . . but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

The only way we can avoid being fooled is with unfettered, vibrant, believable sources of information. We must insist on them and help rebuild them sooner rather than later.

Michael A. Chihak was editor and publisher of the Tucson Citizen from 2000 to 2008. He now works in San Francisco as a communications consultant to nonprofits.