Arizonans are outraged by photo radar, those ubiquitous gizmos that snap pictures of speeders who are cited by mail.

I wasn’t around for the Boston Tea Party, so I can’t describe how riled up those colonial types were 235 years ago when they defied the government and chucked a bunch of tea into Boston Harbor.

The history books describe it as “a direct action protest” in which individuals take things into their own hands.

Had I been at the original Boston Tea Party – not the unrelated Tax Day re-enactments Wednesday – I might have a better understanding of what is going on now with photo radar – those ubiquitous gizmos that snap pictures of speeders, red-light runners and other traffic scofflaws so they can be cited by mail.

I can understand that people nabbed by the units aren’t all that happy with them. But the anti-photo radar movement is made up largely of people who have not been ticketed.

They nonetheless feel the systems are unfair or a violation of their right to privacy or something like that. And they are revolting – in Arizona and around the nation.

I really don’t get it.

Unfair? Is it unfair for cops to have cars with lights hidden behind the grille? Or unmarked cars? Or for them to hide on a side street with a radar gun? This isn’t a game. It’s enforcing laws.

Privacy violation? What right of privacy do you have while speeding or running a red light on a public street? None at all.

Violation of your constitutional rights? I don’t think so. The Founding Fathers were forward-thinking guys, but I can’t find any mention of cameras, radar or even cars in the Constitution.

Nonetheless, I can’t remember anything else the government has done recently that has made people so upset. I’m trying to understand. I really am.

So I asked Joe Scott, marketing director for a Pennsylvania-based outfit called PhantomPlate.com.

Scott’s company has an entire business devoted to beating photo radar in all sorts of ways. Its main product is a database of all known photo radar locations that you can download into your GPS navigation device.

Then when you approach a photo radar location, the thing beeps and you slow down. Keeping the database current costs $39.99 a year.

There also are sprays and plastic covers for your license plate that are supposed to reflect the flash of photo radar and make your license plate unreadable.

Scott tried to explain why photo radar is so objectionable: “Usually when you get pulled over by a police officer, you’ve been doing something wrong,” Scott said. “It’s fair and that’s the way it is.”

Fair. That seems to be the key word used by the anti-photo radar crowd.

Scott said cameras can’t be talked out of issuing a ticket if, for example, you’re speeding on your way to a hospital – something I can’t believe is common.

But there is an irony in Scott’s business. While he makes money defeating photo radar, he doesn’t want to totally defeat it. No photo radar, no business.

Ryan Denke is king of the Arizona anti-photo radar crowd with his Web site, photoradarscam.com.

He’s an unemployed electrical engineer from Peoria who spends his time circulating petitions to put an initiative on the November 2010 ballot to ban photo radar in Arizona.

He says he is “more than confident” he’ll collect enough signatures.

Denke is quick to note that he has “a clean driving record” and has not been nabbed by a radar camera. But his objections center on the fairness issue.

When a human officer nabs you, you can plead your case to the officer and then have the opportunity to face your accuser in court, Denke said.

But when a photo radar-issued ticket arrives in the mail a couple of weeks after the violation, “By then, you don’t know if you were driving that fast,” Denke said.

He also says it’s unfair that as many as half of the vehicles are, in effect, exempt from photo tickets.

Drivers of commercial vehicles can’t be identified and mailed a ticket personally, so companies can ignore citations, he said.

If a plate is obscured – for example, with Scott’s spray – there is no ticket. And drivers from Mexico or another state can ignore photo radar tickets because Arizona won’t track them down, Denke said.

But unless something happens, fighting photo radar is a losing proposition.

At the end of 2006, there were 155 jurisdictions using red-light cameras; two years later, that had more than doubled to 345.

There are 3,000-plus speed and red-light cameras in the nation, up from 2,500 a year ago. The figures are from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

There is, of course an easier and cheaper way to avoid photo radar tickets: Don’t speed or run red lights.

Call the cameras unfair if you like. But also call them omnipresent. And probably here to stay.

Mark Kimble appears at 6:30 p.m. Fridays on the Roundtable segment of “Arizona Illustrated” on KUAT-TV Channel 6. He may be reached at mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com or 573-4662.

The manufacturer claims its spray will reflect the flashes from photo radar cameras, making your license plate unreadable.

One Web site provides photo radar locations than can be downloaded into GPS units.

GABRIEL ROTH

What are we to make of the report of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, delivered in February?

The main recommendations are twofold:

• For the short term, increase the federal gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon and the diesel tax by 15 cents a gallon, both indexed for inflation.

• In the long term, phase out the fuel taxes dedicated to roads and replace them with fees based on vehicle miles traveled.

These recommendations can go some way toward the objective of treating roads as assets in a free economy, with road users paying the costs of their trips and road providers supplying the facilities for which road users are prepared to pay.

The first recommendation is equivalent to a gas tax increase of about 0.5 cents per car-mile, and would raise the federal tax to 28.4 cents per gallon, or about 1.5 cents per car-mile.

There is a case for increasing the amounts payable for the use of some roads, but not for increasing the amounts payable in federal taxes. Increases by individual states would be more cost-effective, with competitive pricing by private providers ideal.

Understandably, many state officials probably prefer a federal increase, to avoid the unpopular task of raising taxes themselves.

The second recommendation would require every vehicle to be equipped with a device capable, by means of GPS signals from satellites, of recording the distances traveled on different roads.

At intervals, the total mileage traveled (but not details of individual trips) would be transmitted to billing agencies. Such arrangements are now in place in Germany (for trucks on the Autobahn) and are to be introduced in the Netherlands in 2011.

These systems are similar to the E-ZPass systems commonly used today, except that such systems would be best handled through private firms instead of government bureaucracies, and information about all trips would be gathered within ve-hicles, without the need for roadside sensors or gantries.

Privacy is a prime concern, and methods have been developed to ensure that only mileage totals are sent to the billing computers. Privacy would be even further protected if the billing were done by competing private entities subject to civil liberties protections.

Vehicle miles traveled fees have important advantages over fuel taxes as a way of paying for road use.

First, the fees can be made to reflect the costs arising from the use of different kinds of vehicles. For example, vehicles with many load-spreading axles, which cause less damage to roads, can be charged lower fees.

Second, VMT fees can be varied to take into account the specific locations and times of trips, as well as trip length. For example, travel in off-peak periods can be charged at lower rates than travel in the peak.

Third, by enabling charges to be routed from road users to road suppliers, VMT charging enables roads to be provided commercially as easily as cell-phone service, eliminating the need for federal and state highway financing, as commercial services can be provided by private firms.

However, these advantages of VMT charges are nullified by the commission’s recommendation for a single, nationwide, federal VMT charge for road use estimated, for “illustrative purposes,” at 2.3 cents per vehicle-mile for cars, equivalent to a gas tax of 48 cents a gallon.

Even worse is the recommendation that all the revenues be routed to Washington for Congressional allocation. This is as sensible as legislating that all payments for telephone use in the U.S. be sent to Washington, for disposition by Congress.

The commission’s support for the federal financing of roads is unfortunate. Since the completion of the Interstate Highway System, Congress has shown little interest in meeting the needs of road users, preferring to engage itself in the distribution of highway monies between the states, and in diverting Highway Trust Fund monies to non-highway uses.

The vast majority of road users would benefit from the abolition of the Highway Trust Fund and the fuel taxes that support it, leaving highway funding to the states.

The states then would be free to explore more direct ways to fund their roads voluntarily from consumers.

For example, by using GPS-based VMT charges, states could apply to roads the same principles used to pay for cell-phone service, with road users opening accounts with private road providers and paying all their road bills in the manner of the E-ZPass payments we take for granted today.

In sum, the commission’s report is good in parts. The recommendation to adopt VMT charging is excellent.

But real reform in transportation financing cannot be expected until roads, which are too important to be left to the vicissitudes of politics, are brought into the market economy and treated like food, water, telecommunications and other necessities.

Gabriel Roth, a research fellow at the Independent Institute (http://independent.org), is the editor of the award-winning “Street Smart – Competition, Entrepreneurship and the Future of Roads.”

Our supposedly construction-addicted state is faring better than more diversified economies

Thousands of Tucsonans line up at a job fair at Tucson Convention Center in January. Arizona has been hit hard by the burst of the housing bubble, but the state's unemployment rate compares favorably to other states' rates.

One of the most firmly held beliefs about the Arizona economy is that it is too dependent on housing.

This goes beyond the indisputable point that housing is a big part of the Arizona economy. The assertion, almost universally accepted, is that housing drives the rest of the Arizona economy.

The housing sector in Arizona has certainly been hammered. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index tracks home values in 20 large metro areas. According to the index, home values in the Phoenix area peaked in June 2006. Since then, they have declined by 46 percent.

This is the largest decline of any metro area in the index, and nearly twice as much as the index average of 27 percent.

According to the Arizona State University department of Realty Studies, residential building permits in Arizona have declined 73 percent since the housing peak.

So, Arizona’s housing sector has suffered a sharper decline than probably anyplace else in the country. If the rest of Arizona’s economy is dependent on housing, then why does Arizona have a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country?

January is the most recent month for which comparative figures are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During January, the country had an unemployment rate of 7.6 percent. Arizona’s rate was 7.0 percent.

The paradox is even starker when looking at major metro areas. The Phoenix area’s jobless rate was 6.7 percent. Only one metro area in the Case-Shiller group had a lower unemployment rate: Washington D.C., which has an economy clearly driven by government. The average unemployment rate for the 20 major metro areas was 8.4 percent.

According to BLS, of the 49 metro areas in the country with a population in excess of 1 million, Phoenix had the seventh-lowest unemployment rate.

Phoenix has done much better than many metro areas alleged to be our economic betters. San Diego, the proclaimed bioscience leader, had an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent. Charlotte, in North Carolina that supposedly does right in education what Arizona does wrong, was at 10.5 percent. Portland, the antithesis of an economy driven by housing, was at 9.8 percent. Seattle, which has the big companies we supposedly can’t attract, was at 7.5 percent.

So, most large metro areas have unemployment rates substantially above the national average while Phoenix, whose housing sector has been hit the hardest, has an unemployment rate substantially below the national average.

What gives?

Arizona has suffered large job losses during the housing decline. Construction employment in Arizona also peaked in June, 2006. Since then, Arizona has lost 88,000 construction jobs, a decline of 36 percent from the peak. Nationally, construction jobs declined by 13 percent.

Construction represented two-thirds of all jobs lost in Arizona. Outside of construction, the job loss in Arizona was less than 2 percent.

It’s rather clear that a lot of Arizona’s residential construction work force was itinerant. And much of it also was illegal.

All of this unveils what should have been obvious all along. Housing does not create its own demand. Something else has to draw people to an area, which in turn creates the demand for housing.

Arizona has a fundamentally solid underlying economy that benefits from, but is not dependent on, housing. And it has a frothy real estate sector that depends on growth generated primarily by other factors.

The real estate sector is oversized. But that is inevitable in a place that is growing faster than other places. That’s not the same as the rest of the economy being dependent on housing.

These days, various advocates of various dubious schemes to “diversify” Arizona’s economy frequently assert that housing is to Phoenix what cars are to Detroit.

If that’s true, why does Detroit have an unemployment rate nearly twice as high as Phoenix’s?

HOUSING MYTH

The Associated Press

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

Hi Corbett Field needs to be made more accessible to handicapped people.

I cannot believe the uproar about baseball and sports in Tucson.

The city of Tucson has 500,000-plus residents with about 1 million living in Pima County. Compare that to the city of Pittsburgh, which has just over 300,000 people.

Pittsburgh has pro baseball, hockey and football teams and Penn State University. What does Tucson have? The Tucson Toros, an independent league team, and the University of Arizona.

It is time the City Council realizes Tucson is no longer a small town where you come to die. We need professional companies, not call centers, and professional sports teams from Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.

The only reason Honeywell is here is because an airline company paid Honeywell to stay in Tucson. Otherwise it would have moved to Phoenix.

It is time for the City Council to open its eyes and realize that Tucson may have 1.5 million people by 2012. It needs to quit relying on Raytheon Missile Systems and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and bring in companies such as Motorola, Sony and other types of industries.

We need a City Council that is visionary enough to see this and start making the necessary moves to do this.

One of the first is to make Hi Corbett Field more accessible to handicapped people by enclosing the ballpark. That would eliminate the direct sunlight and lack of shade for people with medical conditions.

Right now, handicapped people are seated in front of the bleachers. For my wife to go to Hi Corbett, I would have to put a shade cover over her scooter and make a misting system that would make it difficult for fans sitting in the first three rows to see.

At least at Tucson Electric Park the sun was blocked by the building. The smartest thing would have been to enclose TEP, and the Sidewinders would have been profitable because it would have been 75 to 80 degrees instead of over 100 degrees.

It is time for change and smart thinking, not the attitude that we are a small town anymore. We can be better than Phoenix and larger. We are a big city. Get over it.

Mark Walton is an electronics technician who has lived in Tucson since 1973.

Mark Walton

Ability to attract people like bears to honey has sticking point: economy

A Paradise Valley subdivision. Steep declines in home values may keep people from pulling up stakes and moving to Arizona.

At both the state and national levels, pitches are being made for huge expenditures on public works projects as an economic stimulus.

In Arizona, the pitch comes with a local twist: The state has a rapidly growing population. The additional infrastructure will ultimately be needed anyway. So, why not build it now, when the economy could use a boost?

The efficacy of public works spending as an economic stimulus is debatable. And there are major questions about how much idle heavy and commercial construction capacity really exists and how quickly additional capacity can be developed.

But put those issues aside for now. Let’s examine the underlying Arizona twist on the pitch: The population growth is coming anyway, so let’s build to accommodate it now.

Arizona has certainly been one of the fastest-growing states for some time. Although official statistics don’t reflect it yet, the widespread belief is that population growth in Arizona has slowed.

It’s also widely believed that this is a temporary phenomenon, that when the national economy recovers, Arizona will get back to attracting people like bears to honey.

Based upon history, that would certainly seem to be a safe bet. But, as George Will says, history repeats itself until it doesn’t. And there are reasons to be cautious about assumptions regarding what Arizona’s future holds when the current economic malaise clears.

The future-will-be-the-same argument assumes that population migration to Arizona is being suppressed by the inability of people to sell homes in other places and uncertain job prospects here. Once the housing market stabilizes and the job market perks up, the moving vans will resume their rumble.

However, economic policy choices (including a return to lax monetary policy and mammoth borrowing to fund bailouts and stimuli) may lead to a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

That, in and of itself, wouldn’t necessarily mean that migration to Arizona wouldn’t resume. Arizona grew at a very quick clip during the 1970s, the last period of prolonged national economic stagnation.

However, this downturn may be different. From the double-whammy of steep housing and stock declines, many Americans have seen their net worth shrink by a quarter or a third.

That’s a sobering development whose long-term implications cannot begin to be grasped at this point.

For a while, Americans may become a much more economically cautious people. Families may start living below their means again. Nest eggs may become more important. Savings from current income may become a larger part of building them, rather than relying on appreciation of already owned assets.

There’s a certain amount of risk-taking in moving. Some people move to take a specific job. But confidence in the longevity of any job has been shaken. People may become reluctant to give up networks they have developed where they currently live that can be accessed to find a new job should the need arise.

From the 1950s on, Americans increasingly moved to places they wanted to live without having a job in hand, confident in landing something once there. That sort of risk-taking may abate.

Then there is the issue of illegal immigration, which clouds any crystal ball.

Foreign immigration has driven a significant part of Arizona’s population growth. Since 1990, Arizona has added 650,000 foreign-born residents. In fact, foreign immigration has accounted for about a quarter of Arizona’s overall population growth.

And much of that foreign immigration has been illegal – according to most estimates, about 60 percent of it.

Illegal immigration is also believed to be down, but there are disputes as to the reasons why – a poor economy or increased enforcement activity. Which is the case won’t be known until the economy and the housing market recovers.

And if it proves to be enforcement, the effect of losing the construction labor previously supplied by illegal immigrants is another economic unknown.

Arizona doesn’t have a birthright to be one of the fastest-growing states in the union. That’s a function of the willingness of others to take moving risks and economic conditions nationally and locally – all huge imponderables right now.

This is, in short, a time for Arizona governments to be hunkering down, trying to manage their way through tight revenues.

It’s not a time to be making big expenditure commitments based upon the assumption that the future will be like the past.

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

———

Arizona’s population by decade

1900: 122,931

1910: 204,354

1920: 334,162

1930: 435,573

1940: 499,261

1950: 749,587

1960: 1,302,161

1970: 1,770,900

1980: 2,718,215

1990: 3,665,228

2000: 5,130,632

2007: 6,338,755

Wedding business-to-be draws a cold reception from blissful community

Tanque Verde Loop Road is adorned with signs in opposition to a feared wedding business at a proposed chapel there.

The last best place in the Tanque Verde Valley, a secluded glen of quiet families, now is ready for war.

Forget Forty Niner Country Club, Mariposa Resort and the gated communities and swimming pools that have come to characterize this valley.

The mile of Tanque Verde Loop Road north of Speedway – “the Loop” – is a relic of mostly old, unpretentious properties.

But in the country kitchens behind the funky goat yards and horse barns, sophisticated computer investigations are producing pounds of corporate and court documents.

The findings are painstakingly plotted on a color-coded chart revealing a Byzantine web of corporate intrigue.

If slick real estate mogul John Fazio thinks he’s dealing with country bumpkin simpletons out on the Loop, he’s got another think coming.

Fazio says he plans to plunk a church in the close confines of this community.

But Fazio has yet to open a “church” that didn’t instantly morph into a busy wedding center replete with receptions serving alcohol.

Au contrair, he’ll interject. That business is run by his wife, Debi Fazio (or Debi Beyer-Fazio or Beyer Fazio sans hyphen, depending on the document).

But no matter whose name is on which part of this family affair, business has been brisk at both Reflections at the Buttes in Oro Valley and Reflections at Saguaro Buttes on Old Spanish Trail.

Wedding business, that is. The official “church” at Saguaro Buttes draws few parishioners.

Now Fazio is angling to open the Mesquite Grove Chapel at 1902 N. Tanque Verde Loop Road.

His other Reflections sites are sizable. Mesquite Grove, however, would occupy just 2.8 acres next to humble homes on the Loop.

“Is it a church or an event center?” asks Tina Whittemore, chief zoning inspector for Pima County. “If the whole purpose of the church is to front the weddings . . . it wouldn’t be allowed.”

She is awaiting documents from Fazio to demonstrate that the property will be used only for a church.

If Whittemore is not convinced, Fazio could appeal to the county Board of Adjustment.

In Oro Valley, Fazio filed a lawsuit against the city in July for failing to issue a certificate of occupancy after modifications to the business there.

Some elected officials fear Fazio may sue the county, too. But a lawsuit is the least of the Loop residents’ worries.

They’re most concerned about commercial traffic on a little-used country lane where children regularly ride bicycles and horses.

They worry that the mesquite forest on the site would be mowed down to create a parking lot.

And they fear the prospect of drinking, noise and bright lights from night wedding receptions, among other things.

But a lawsuit? “Mr. Fazio can bring it on. He picked the wrong neighborhood to do the wrong thing in,” says Murray Stein, who lives down a dirt lane off the Loop.

“We will follow this fight as far as it goes. And if Mr. Fazio succeeds in opening this business, he can look forward to picketers (when weddings are held there).”

Signs and banners opposing such a business already are displayed prominently along the Loop. If Fazio proceeds, Stein says, those banners will multiple, becoming veritable wallpaper along the roadway.

The fierce opposition is understandable.

A wedding center on the Loop would have little effect on most of us who live elsewhere in the Tanque Verde Valley.

But the Loop is truly the road less traveled.

Strangers don’t pass through because the neighborhood’s narrow, dirt side streets lead to dead ends.

Neighbors know and look out for one another, and strangers here stick out.

“This is such a special place, and we’ve so loved it,” says Karen Kartchner, whose rancher in-laws donated the Kartchner Caverns land that eventually became a state park.

“It’s just heartbreaking to think of this happening.”

An events center “just seems terribly inappropriate for this neighborhood,” says Ken Wise, who lives across the street from the Fazio site.

“This is one of the last remaining mesquite bosques in Pima County. . . . It’s dark out here, and he’s going to light up the place. And there are flooding issues,” Wise adds.

The residents are represented by county Supervisor Ray Carroll, who calls Fazio “the most pugnacious preacher I’ve encountered.”

As Loop residents await Whittemore’s ruling and Fazio’s next move, Carroll says, “They’re not only concerned about the midnight macarena. They’re concerned . . . whether this is more about credit cards than holy cards.”

Amen.

Reach Billie Stanton by e-mail at bstanton@tucsoncitizen.com or by calling 573-4664.

Diana Jones: “Everything we addressed with (Fazio), he had a slick answer. Everything he said made me more upset.”

Location of the proposed chapel

General Motors headquarters in Detroit. On average, GM pays $81.18 an hour in wages and benefits to its U.S. hourly workers, The Wall Street Journal says.

Remember when Democrats lamented the growing budget deficit and spoke of the burden our children and grandchildren would face if we didn’t put our fiscal house in order?

That was when Republicans ran the federal government and Democrats opposed tax cuts. Now that Democrats are about to be in charge, concern about the deficit has disappeared and spending plans proliferate, even though the national debt passed $10 trillion in September and we added another $500 billion last month.

The latest, but by no means the last supplicant at the public trough, is the auto industry, which wants a bailout to save jobs because its cars are not selling. There is a reason for that and it can be summed up in five words: The United Auto Workers Union (UAW).

Half of the $50 billion the auto industry wants is for health care for its current and retired employees. This is the result of increasing UAW demands, strikes and threats of strikes unless health care and pension benefits were regularly increased.

While in the past UAW settled for some benefit decreases while bargaining with the Big Three U.S. automakers, according to the Wall Street Journal in September of 2006, “on average, GM pays $81.18 an hour in wages and benefits to its U.S. hourly workers.”

Those increased costs, including the cost of health care, were passed along to consumers, adding $1,600 to the price of every vehicle GM produced. In February 2008, after General Motors offered buyouts to 74,000 employees, the Center for Automotive Research estimated the average wage, including benefits, for current GM workers had dropped to $78.21 an hour. New hires pulled down a paltry $26.65.

GM, now facing a head-on collision with reality, has taken an important first step toward fiscal responsibility by announcing the elimination of lifetime health care benefits for about 100,000 of its white-collar retirees at the end of this year.

Contrast this with non-union Toyota, whose total hourly U.S. labor costs, with benefits, are $35 per hour. Those lower labor costs mean Toyota enjoys a cost advantage over U.S. automakers of about $1,000 per vehicle. Is it any wonder that Toyota is outselling American automakers and from plants that have been built on U.S. soil?

According to James Sherk of The Heritage Foundation, Japanese car companies provide their employees with good jobs at good wages: “The typical hourly employee at a Toyota, Honda or Nissan plant in America makes almost $100,000 a year in wages and benefits, before overtime.”

While many in the Democratic Party have focused on “corporate greed” and “fairness,” according to Sherk, “competition, not corporate greed, is the real problem facing labor unions. When unions negotiate raises for their members, companies pass those higher costs on to consumers.”

Americans used to tolerate those increases, but no more. Competition has brought lower prices for Japanese cars and Americans are buying more of them, taking a pass on those manufactured in Detroit.

The argument made by those favoring a bailout of Detroit is that it will save more than 100,000 jobs in the auto and related industries. But what good does that do if people are not buying cars in sufficient numbers to allow the Big Three to make a profit?

This becomes the kind of corporate welfare Democrats decry when it comes to Wall Street. But, then, Wall Street isn’t unionized and Democrats want and need the union vote.

What about Chrysler’s bailout 30 years ago? It was a loan. Didn’t Chrysler pay back the government? Wasn’t it worth the risk to save jobs?

According to the Heritage Foundation, the $1.2 billion in loan guarantees made by the Carter administration still resulted in a partial bankruptcy for Chrysler. “Most of the company’s creditors were forced to accept losses just as they would if Chrysler had gone through Chapter 11, and the company ended up firing almost half its workforce, including 20,000 white-collar workers and 42,600 hourly wage earners. The only people who benefited from the bailout were Chrysler shareholders.”

The Heritage Foundation also notes, “If Washington really wants to help Detroit, they could end the regulatory nightmare that prevents profitable, fuel-efficient cars from reaching market.”

Ford, they say, has begun selling a car that gets 65 mpg, but they’re not selling it in America. Why? Because it runs on diesel fuel “and environmentalists in the U.S. have fought to keep diesel taxes high and refinery capacity low.”

More government intervention in private industry will bring us closer to socialism. Better to renegotiate the labor contracts, re-train workers for other jobs, or help them get hired at the Japanese auto plants in America than to subsidize a failed economic model for the sake of political gain.

E-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.

If I were the U.S. Treasury Department, I’d offer GM executives $10 billion, on the condition that they walk away from Chrysler and never look back.

Or $15 billion, $20 billion – whatever it takes to ride out this economic storm without getting panicked into a desperate and ill-advised merger.

For politicians who talk about helping Main Street as well as Wall Street, the cost of low-interest loans to help automakers weather a recession is chicken feed compared with the $1 trillion-plus already approved for banks and financial firms.

The payoff is also easier to foresee and more immediate: protecting hundreds of thousands of jobs for blue- and white-collar workers at factories, dealerships and other businesses across the country.

I’d insist on other conditions beyond banning a GM-Chrysler merger. Any U.S.-based automaker would qualify for low-interest loans as long as management could convince me it has a feasible plan for the company to survive long-term. A plan that includes alternative-fuel vehicles and a thriving lineup of cars of all sizes. Cars designed and developed to compete with vehicles from anywhere on Earth. Great cars to end Detroit’s reliance on trucks.

GM has such a plan. Ford does, too. They’ve learned from the mistakes they made in the 1980s and ’90s. The recent introduction of successful vehicles such as the Chevrolet Malibu, Cadillac CTS, Ford Fusion, Escape and Edge and GMC Acadia prove it. Cut them checks.

Chrysler’s leaders, on the other hand, spent much of the nine years they were part of DaimlerChrysler approving vehicles that didn’t stand a chance in the market – the Sebring sedan and Jeep Compass, to name two of too many. New owners from Cerberus arrived a year ago and dropped even the pretense of a long-term strategy.

I’m sure Cerberus would happily cash a federal check, but nothing in its behavior suggests the money would secure Chrysler’s future.

Cerberus’ ownership of Chrysler is a strip-and-flip operation. Step one: Lay off people, cut investments, close plants and drop models to make Chrysler a small, easily digestible acquisition. Step two: Sell it to an automaker that will build something new from the ashes.

Chrysler possesses many valuable assets. It builds great minivans – so good that Volkswagen hired it to provide the new Routan. Nissan has stopped developing big pickups because it saw the new Dodge Ram and realized Chrysler does the job better and cheaper.

Chrysler also has a sales network that blankets North America, the renowned Jeep brand and the legendary Hemi V8 and 300 sedan. It’s a smart acquisition for a number of automakers.

But not GM. That combination could devastate both companies rather than save either of them. GM and Chrysler have too much overlap in vehicles, sales outlets, manufacturing and engineering. A merger would assure widespread closures of plants and dealerships, and thousands of job losses from the factory floor and engineering office to the reception desk and service bay at your local dealership.

I don’t see the feds underwriting that, but an aid package that required a merged company to keep extra factories, trucks, brands and dealerships – as has been suggested – would set GM’s own reorganization back years and threaten the company’s future.

It’s a matter of time before Cerberus sells Chrysler. The government may have a role in facilitating that deal and protecting workers, but not at the cost of overburdening another struggling U.S. company.

Element to fuel cars abundant – stations aren’t

The Chevrolet Equinox fuel-cell vehicle draws onlookers at the University of Arizona Mall.

The last time I heard anyone talk about using hydrogen for transportation, some guy on an old newsreel was yelling, “Oh, the humanity” and the Hindenburg was crumbling to the ground in a huge fireball.

That, J. Byron McCormick assures me, will not happen with the fleet of hydrogen-powered SUVs General Motors has deployed under his leadership.

No explosions. No fireballs. No newsreel spectacular.

But also no gasoline. And no exhaust except for water and warm air. And a very green vehicle running on a fuel that could be manufactured with power from the sun.

Technically, it is possible – and it is being done now on a very small scale. Jay Leno drives a GM car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

But daunting practical barriers must be overcome before you can buy a car that runs on hydrogen and ditch the gasoline habit forever.

McCormick is executive director of fuel cell activities at GM – and he got his start at the University of Arizona, where he received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering. (For UA history buffs, McCormick is not related to a former UA president with the identical name: J. Byron McCormick.)

It was at UA that this McCormick first became interested in the technology of fuel cells, a device that breaks hydrogen into its two chemical components – oxygen and water – and in the process produces power to run an electric motor.

The technology is used on space vehicles and in nuclear submarines – mostly to produce water and oxygen, not power.

This week, McCormick returned to the UA campus with two Chevrolet Equinox sport utility vehicles that have been modified to run on hydrogen instead of gasoline. Except for fuel cell graphics plastered all over the SUVs, there was little obvious difference.

The vehicle drives like an “ordinary” one. But with an electric motor, it is totally silent while stopped and makes only a low hum when moving. Acceleration is impressive, with the vehicle leaping away from stops faster than gasoline-powered cars.

It will go about 200 miles on a hydrogen fill-up – but then what? There are no hydrogen pumps at your neighborhood gasoline station. There are a few around, but they are inaccessible to the public.

That’s the chicken-and-egg problem keeping all of us from driving hydrogen-powered cars: There isn’t a network of hydrogen fuel stations because there aren’t any hydrogen cars. And there aren’t any hydrogen cars because they have nowhere to fill up.

To nudge this problem off dead center, GM has hand-built about 100 hydrogen-powered SUVs and lent them – free – to drivers who live where there are a few fueling stations. Most are in the Los Angeles area, with a few in New York state and a handful in Washington, D.C.

Late-night host Jay Leno, well known as an automobile connoisseur, received one of the coveted vehicles. Most went to ordinary people willing to drive them and report any problems.

More will be built and distributed in Germany, South Korea, Japan and China, which have better-established hydrogen distribution networks.

There is no shortage of hydrogen. Vast quantities are vented as waste, often in the processing of petroleum. Or it can be made as needed, using electricity. If the electricity comes from solar cells, wind or some other renewal resource, the process is totally clean.

However, hydrogen also can be extracted from natural gas, releasing carbon dioxide. That makes the process less environmentally friendly.

McCormick predicts that production models of a GM hydrogen-powered vehicle will be rolling off the assembly lines by 2015 – only seven years from now. At first they are likely to be expensive boutique vehicles, but within five more years, they should be comparable in price to gasoline-powered vehicles of that time, McCormick said.

And what about the specter of scads of vehicles carrying Hindenburg-type fuel? Don’t worry. Fuel tanks are protected with Kevlar. And should they leak, the gas dissipates far faster than gasoline does, McCormick said.

Whew.

Mark Kimble appears Fridays on “Arizona Illustrated” on KUAT-TV, Channel 6. Reach him at mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com or 573-4662.

UA graduate student Grace Shih checks out the interior of the hydrogen-powered SUV.

McCormick

———

THE BENEFITS OF HYDROGEN

• Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is available from a wide range of sources on Earth.

• There are large hydrogen production sites throughout the United States.

• Enough hydrogen is produced each year to fuel 180 million fuel-cell vehicles. Production is forecast to increase by 45 percent in three years.

• At current costs and production rates, hydrogen for a vehicle would cost the equivalent of $2.50 per gallon of gasoline, on a cost-per-mile basis. In the long term, that is expected to drop to $1-$1.50 per gallon.

• The only emissions from a hydrogen-powered vehicles are water and a little warm air.

Proposition 201 creates a huge incentive for dissatisfied buyers to sue. There's little risk in going to court to ask for more than the homebuilder is offering.

Proposition 201 proponents, mostly unions, say the initiative is to protect new homebuyers against shoddy construction.

Opponents of Prop. 201, mostly homebuilders, claim that its intent to encourage litigation and enrich trial lawyers.

Although some of their arguments are stretched, opponents have the much better case. The primary effect of Prop. 201 would be to increase litigation rather than fix homes.

Consumer surveys indicate that most people are generally satisfied when they buy a new home. When they aren’t, however, it is a very big deal. For virtually everyone, their home is a major investment, both financially and emotionally.

In the 1990s, the home construction industry in California was racked by an explosion of construction defect litigation. The condo market largely froze.

In a former life, when I ran a public affairs agency, I was hired by the industry here in Arizona to promote an alternative dispute mechanism to prevent the California litigation craze from coming here.

I apparently wasn’t very successful, because legislation wasn’t passed in Arizona until long after I had become a journalist.

However, legislation was passed in 2002, on a very strong bipartisan vote. Only three of 90 legislators voted against it.

The current law is intended to encourage the resolution of disputes over home construction without litigation.

The buyer tells the homebuilder what he thinks is wrong. The homebuilder can make an offer to fix it. If buyer and builder agree, the repair is made. If not, the buyer still can sue.

If the dispute goes to court and the buyer gets more than the homebuilder offered, the homebuilder has to pay the buyer’s attorney fees. If, however, the buyer gets less than the homebuilder offered, the buyer has to pay the homebuilder’s attorney fees.

Under Prop. 201, the buyer would never have to pay the homebuilder’s attorney fees. In fact, the buyer would get attorney fees if he won anything, even if it was considerably less than the homebuilder offered before litigation.

This creates a huge incentive for dissatisfied buyers to sue. There’s little risk in going to court to ask for more than the homebuilder is offering.

You have to really like litigation to think that’s a good idea. And it’s likely to work against most dissatisfied buyers who just want their problems fixed, because it dramatically reduces the incentive of the homebuilder to be proactive before litigation.

That’s the heart of the measure and the main reason it should be rejected. Prop. 201, however, has other provisions, the consequences of which opponents are at least somewhat exaggerating.

You may have heard the opposition protesting that Prop. 201 even allows people who don’t buy a home to sue. That, however, isn’t for construction defects, which would clearly be ridiculous.

The proposition also requires that new home contracts contain additional disclosures, mostly about financial arrangements the seller may have with those doing the financing for the homeowner. This is the provision over which nonbuyers can sue.

That’s less ridiculous, but only slightly so. If someone doesn’t end up buying, what harm has he suffered? If there are harmful nondisclosures, real buyers can make the case.

Opponents are also making a big deal out of Prop, 201 striking current law exempting new home contracts with arbitration clauses from the dispute resolution mechanism set up by the statute. The proponents are trying to do away with arbitration is the claim.

What the proponents are trying to do by striking that provision in existing law is unclear, and certainly the overall thrust of the proposition is to encourage litigation. The Federal Arbitration Act, however, protects arbitration contract provisions and pre-empts state laws to the contrary.

There is one provision of Prop. 201 that would be a major disservice to most buyers of new homes that isn’t getting discussed enough. It would allow buyers to back out of a deal within 100 days and get 95 percent of their deposit back. If that were enacted, either construction on new homes would be routinely delayed for 100 days or deposits would become astronomical.

Proponents of Prop. 201 want voters to think it’s about a 10-year warranty on new homes. But Arizona courts have generally held that there is an implied warranty that new homes have to remain functionally fit for eight years, so there’s less gain in this than it appears.

Regardless of the motivation or the intent, the primary effect of Prop. 201 will be to have construction defects litigated rather than fixed.

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

If Democrats gain unchecked power, the one thing they would most likely do is abolish the secret ballot for union elections. Even the so-called "conservative" Democrats running in swing districts are toeing the line on this one.

The anchor of this election season has been a fairly fixed sentiment among the electorate that they have had enough of George Bush and Republican rule.

That, in and of itself, doesn’t determine the outcome. Candidate races come down to: Compared to whom? John McCain, for example, has consistently outperformed the Republican brand in the presidential race.

Left largely unexamined, however, is the flip side of the sentiment to give the Republicans the boot. What would it mean if voters gave Democrats largely unchecked power at the national level, the presidency and large enough majorities in Congress to run over the Republican minority?

Would the result be something the American people want?

If Democrats gain unchecked power, the one thing they would most likely do is abolish the secret ballot for union elections. Even the so-called “conservative” Democrats running in swing districts are toeing the line on this one.

The House Democratic leadership forced a vote on the proposal last year, even though the issue could be used against its vulnerable members. Only two Democrats voted against it. All of the Arizona Democrats running in swing districts – Harry Mitchell, Gabrielle Giffords, Ann Kirkpatrick and Bob Lord – support abolishing the secret ballot for union elections.

The second most likely thing Democrats would do is to make the tax system sharply more redistributionist.

Obama famously vows to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year. But that is only the beginning. He says he will cut taxes for 95 percent of American families, but only about 60 percent of such families pay income taxes now.

What Obama is proposing is a series of refundable tax credits for virtually everything people do: work, raise kids, save, buy a house, send children to college. The way a “refundable” tax credit works is that if the credit exceeds your income tax liability, the government sends you a check for the difference.

Obama justifies this as a “tax cut” by saying that, for those who don’t pay incomes taxes, it offsets their payroll tax. That, however, merely means the redistribution is occurring in the way the country finances Social Security and Medicare and undermines their status as social insurance programs.

Regardless, these refundable tax credits are more properly seen as large increases in spending rather than as true tax cuts.

Unchecked Democrats are likely to enact fundamental reform in health care. Obama proposes allowing all Americans to buy into a system similar to that federal employees currently have, in which private insurance companies compete. That is the heart of many reform proposals by both the right and the left.

However, Obama also proposes a Medicare-style fee-for-service alternative that might squeeze out the private insurance options. It may be intended to.

Democrats are clearly prepared to open the spending floodgates, using the economic downturn as an excuse.

Congress already has enacted a $168 billion stimulus package, a $300 billion housing refinancing plan and a $700 billion bailout for the banking system. Now, Democrats want another $300 billion stimulus.

This from a government that has to borrow money to pay the light bill.

And brace yourself if Democrats reform financial regulation. They like to use corporations to implement their social policies off budget. Remember Fannie and Freddie?

In reciting this litany, however, it becomes clear how little grounds the Republicans have to criticize it, except for taxes.

Big government spending programs? Bush proposed the largest expansion of the federal role in education since Jimmy Carter with No Child Left Behind and the largest expansion of the entitlement state since Lyndon Johnson with his Medicare prescription drug benefit. Most congressional Republicans supported them.

Racking up deficits? Bush is the champ. Interfering in the private economy? The Bush administration just partially nationalized the banks, forcing healthy banks to accept public capital they didn’t want.

John McCain once could have legitimately claimed to serve as a check on Democratic excesses, particularly on spending. And Americans seem to like divided government.

However, McCain supported the $700 billion bailout and proposes that the federal government spend another $300 billion buying up mortgages at face value. Vetoing earmarks isn’t going to make up for that.

So, there you have it:

An election Republicans deserve to lose, but Democrats don’t deserve to win.

RANDY HARRIS/Tucson Citizen

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

———

TAXES: WHERE THEY STAND

Barack Obama

Obama would keep the Bush tax cuts for earners whose income is less than $250,000. He would let the rate for the top income tax bracket go back to 39.6 percent. He would exempt the first $7 million for couples from estate tax, after which the rate would be 45 percent. He’d triple the earned income tax credit for the working poor. Seniors earning less than $50,000 would pay no income tax.

John McCain

McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts for not being paired with spending cuts but now says they should be made permanent. He would exempt the first $10 million for couples from the estate tax, after which the rate would be 15 percent. He wants to lower taxes on dividends and capital gains and lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. He’d double the exemption per dependent to $7,000.

———

THE POLL

Results of a CBS-New York Times national phone survey of 771 likely voters. The margin of error for the poll, conducted Sunday through Tuesday, is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

OBAMA: 52%

McCAIN: 39%

OF INTEREST: About two-thirds are comfortable with Democrat Obama, and evenly split on whether they are comfortable with Republican McCain or uneasy about him. Three-fourths believe Obama has the temperament and personality to be president; just over half say the same for McCain.

UA law students to help voters at the polls, where proper attire will be required.

Erin Ford (left) and Emily Kane will be among some 60 University of Arizona law students who will check polling places around Tucson on Election Day.

Unless you just emerged from a cave, you know not to wear your Barack Obama “Change We Need” T-shirt when you go to vote.

The same goes for your John McCain “Country First” cap. Or your Ralph Nader whatever.

All that stuff is considered electioneering and is not permitted at the polling places.

But what if you have a shirt with just Obama’s picture on it? Or one with McCain’s name and nothing else?

Or what if your shirt has a picture of you and your spouse and children. Could that be considered electioneering in support of Prop. 102, the constitutional ban on gay marriages?

Would a picture of a house on your shirt be considered supportive of Prop. 100 – Protect Our Homes?

Some of this may seem absurd. But it all is open to interpretation by the people working at the polls. A shirt or a button or something else you considered innocent may keep you from voting.

More than 150 million registered voters are in this country. And in 12 days, an estimated 9 million of them will cast their very first ballots. It is likely to be the largest-ever turnout of first-time voters.

When 9 million people show up on the same day to do something they’ve never done before, there will be problems. And clothing issues may not be the most serious concern.

To help resolve problems, two University of Arizona students in the College of Law are organizing dozens of their classmates to monitor polling places on Election Day. They have no official role, but they are part of a national group that will try to work things out so people who are willing and eligible to vote have that chance.

Emily Kane, a third-year law student at UA, became interested in the effort after taking a class in election law. She talked with classmate Erin Ford, and the two got started more than a year ago.

To make sure the effort was free of political bias, UA chapters of the liberal Federalist Society and the conservative American Constitutional Society were invited to take part.

“We want to make sure there is nothing going on inside the polls that could disenfranchise voters,” Kane said.

There might not be enough pens to mark ballots. Lines could be too long. Equipment may not be working. Voters may show up at the wrong polling places. There might be questions about whether a voter has the proper identification required by Arizona law.

Or there could be a dispute about a T-shirt.

Ford says more than 60 law students and about 15 volunteer law faculty members will work in groups of two, checking polling places around town.

They’ll stay outside the 75-foot electioneering boundary, talking with voters, and will go inside only if invited by workers.

The students will be “trained volunteers who are there to help,” Ford said, and will not be trying to force a confrontation.

The help likely will be welcome and needed, said Karen J. Hartman-Tellez, a Phoenix attorney with Steptoe & Johnson. She came to Tucson last week to help train the law students who have volunteered to work Election Day.

“The T-shirt issue is very hot,” Hartman-Tellez said. She noted that the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona recently wrote to state elections officials, asking that the ban on electioneering at the polls be narrowly defined.

Voters who show up wearing partisan T-shirts should not be turned away if they are “involved in a silent and passive expression of their position,” the ACLU wrote. The state rejected that notion.

“There is no doubt the polling places will be busy and the lines will be very long,” Hartman-Tellez said. If delays keep everyone from voting, lawyers will be prepared to go to court to keep the polls open late, she said, adding, “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

The local effort is part of a nationwide undertaking to make sure people who want to vote can do so. People with any questions about voting from now through Election Day can call a toll-free number (see box) for immediate assistance.

“I’ve always been involved in social justice work,” Kane said, “and I think our greatest changes start on Election Day.”

Mark Kimble appears at 6:30 p.m. Fridays on the Roundtable segment of “Arizona Illustrated” on KUAT-TV, Channel 6. He may be reached at mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com or 573-4662.

When 9 million people show up on the same day to do something they've never done before, there will be problems.

———

ELECTION HELP

For any questions about voting – your polling place location, what identification is needed, voting hours – or for any problems on Election Day, call a toll-free number and your question will be answered or a volunteer dispatched to resolve problems. English: 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) español: 888-VE-Y-VOTA (888-839-8682)

A mandate to purchase health insurance can be seen as a self-responsibility requirement and an anti-free rider protection.

Proposition 101 stands for a simple and commendable principle: People should have the right to use their own money to purchase the health care they want.

How the proposition would affect Arizona’s health care system now and in the future isn’t quite so simple.

The proposition is intended to preclude the imposition of a government health care plan that would mandate that everyone participate and forbid the purchase of health care outside the plan.

It is also intended to preclude government mandates that individuals purchase health insurance or that employers provide health insurance or pay a fine.

These are not idle concerns. In 2006, Massachusetts passed a plan with both individual and employer mandates. Vermont adopted an employer mandate that same year.

New Jersey has adopted a requirement that all children be insured. California is considering a Massachusetts-styled proposal.

In Arizona, House Democratic Leader Phil Lopes has been touting a proposal in which a government commission would establish a standard benefit plan for the state and set reimbursement rates for health care facilities and practitioners. Private insurance would be forbidden for services covered by the government plan.

The opposition to Prop. 101 is claiming that it could dramatically increase costs for the state’s Medicaid plan, which is based on restricting choices regarding health care providers.

That’s nonsense. Proposition 101 confers a constitutional right on individuals to purchase health care services and coverage directly. It confers no rights on individuals with respect to health care purchased for them by others, either the government or employers.

If individuals decide to enroll in the state’s Medicaid plan, they have to abide by the rules of that plan. Proposition 101 doesn’t change that at all.

In reality, opponents of Proposition 101 want to preserve the option of mandated participation and a governmental system without opt outs.

If there is to be universal access, the health care of those sick, particularly those with chronic illnesses, has to be subsidized.

Universal access could be easily provided simply by allowing anyone to buy into the state’s Medicaid pool. In that way, however, the subsidy would be reasonably transparent and borne by taxes.

Many universal access advocates prefer to hide the subsidy through the premium mechanism. By mandating that individuals purchase insurance, particularly in a governmental system without opt outs, the young and healthy are subsidizing the chronically sick without knowing it.

An employer play-or-pay requirement also hides the cost of the government social welfare policy.

Universal access is a laudable policy. But the necessary subsidy should be provided transparently through the tax mechanism, not hidden through the premium mechanism or employer mandates.

To the extent Proposition 101 precludes more opaque options, it forces reform discussion in the right direction.

However, the claim by supporters that Proposition 101 is purely preventative is probably not true. Proposition 101 would also probably make fairly sweeping changes in the existing private health insurance market.

Arizona, like many states, imposes a variety of mandates on private health insurance plans. These mandates include various medical conditions, such as autism, and various health care procedures, such as breast reconstruction in cancer cases.

There also are mandates that various health care professionals, such as chiropractors, be covered if the medical condition being treated falls within their scope of practice.

Proposition 101 says that no law can be passed that restricts an individual’s freedom of choice regarding “private plans of any type.” That presumably would include plans free of the mandates the state currently imposes.

Now, I happened to think that this is a good thing. Government shouldn’t be dictating the terms of insurance contracts. And these mandates are widely thought to drive up the cost of health insurance. People should have the right to purchase stripped-down insurance policies if they want.

But it does mean that the impact of Proposition 101 is probably far broader than proponents are admitting.

I certainly agree with Proposition 101′s goals of protecting the right of individuals to purchase health care services directly and to preclude employer play-or-pay provisions.

I’m more ambivalent about precluding a government mandate that people purchase health insurance. After all, if people get sick, they get taken care off. And if they don’t have insurance, often the rest of us are stuck with the bill one way or another.

A mandate to purchase health insurance can be seen as a self-responsibility requirement and an anti-free rider protection.

In the final analysis, however, it’s better to have the right to purchase health care independent of government constitutionally protected than not.

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

You wouldn’t have picked up on it during the debates, but John McCain and Barack Obama actually agree on some issues. One of them is gay marriage.

Both presidential candidates oppose the concept, preferring instead the squishy alternative of civil unions.

They’re both wrong. I can sympathize. In 2000, when 61 percent of California voters approved Proposition 22, a ballot measure that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, I was an opponent of gay marriage. I thought that gay rights activists should concentrate on a more achievable goal such as a federal civil rights bill outlawing private-sector discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Then a gay family member helped me see that the issue wasn’t as complicated as I was making it. I now believe we simply can’t have a two-tiered system where some of us have the right to marry and others don’t, based on sexual orientation.

The fact that gays and lesbians – including some who are already in committed relationships – want to get married doesn’t weaken the institution. It strengthens it by allowing more people to participate.

As more states allow gays and lesbians to marry – Connecticut recently joined the list – I’ve taken note that civilization has not crumbled.

Here in California, some people are still worried it might. Proposition 22 was struck down last spring by the California Supreme Court, thus clearing the way for gay marriages. Now the opponents of gay marriage have proposed another ballot initiative, Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.

McCain has endorsed the measure. But Obama’s position is all over the map.

Despite having said that he opposes same-sex marriage and that each state should reach its own decision, Obama has also said that he opposes “divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution” in order to prohibit gay marriage.

There you have one of the inconsistencies in the “No on 8″ campaign.

After President Clinton signed the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 – defining marriage as between a man and a woman and excusing states from recognizing gay unions approved by other states – supporters of gay marriage said the matter should be settled by the states.

Now that Californians are trying to do just that, the supporters of gay marriage are yelling foul. If the federal government can’t settle this issue, and the states can’t either, then where do opponents of gay marriage – misguided though they may be – go to make their voices heard?

The “Yes on 8″ campaign has its own built-in contradiction. Opponents of gay marriage make a fuss over the fact that a handful of judges overrode the wishes of millions of voters. You don’t say?

These people are all too eager to use ballot initiatives to play citizen legislators, as they did eight years ago. But when real legislators pass a law, whatever they come up with must be able to survive judicial review.

The same goes for a voter-approved initiative. The opponents of gay marriage want all the power that comes from making laws, but none of the responsibility of making sure the laws they pass are constitutional.

Meanwhile, the California campaign is topsy-turvy. A Field Poll released Sept. 18 found that 38 percent of likely voters backed Proposition 8 and 55 percent opposed it.

Now, just one month later, a Survey USA poll – conducted on behalf of four California television stations – finds that 47 percent of likely voters support the initiative while just 42 percent oppose it.

One reason for the turnaround seems to be radio and television ads. A despicable offering from the “Yes on 8″ camp plays on the fear that, if gay marriage continues, it will make its way into the public school curriculum.

The television ad features a little girl who comes home from school and informs her mother that she’s reading a book about a prince who can’t find a princess to marry and so instead he marries another prince. And, she says, when she grows up, she can marry a princess.

Good heavens. The spot does not explain that California parents have the right to be notified of any instruction of sexually implicit material and to pull their children out of class if they so desire.

Instead, what you wind up with is Willie Horton meets “Sesame Street.”

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a columnist and editorial board member of The San Diego Union-Tribune. E-mail: ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com

Kyl: Candidates who criticized bailout "should have known better."

It’s probably premature for Democrat Gabrielle Giffords to list conservative Sen. Jon Kyl among her supporters.

But Kyl has come to Giffords’ aid after criticism by Republican foe Tim Bee – even going so far as dispatching one of his top aides to, in Kyl’s words, “straighten out” Bee’s campaign manager.

So who’s the maverick now?

It’s an unusual move for Kyl, a reliable conservative and, as whip, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate.

But after blistering criticism of the financial bailout/rescue/ stabilization bill from thousands of his constituents as well as from Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives – including Bee – Kyl had enough.

And Giffords was among those who ended up benefiting.

Remember back two weeks when both houses of Congress were debating the hurried $700 billion bailout bill? The House rejected the bill, sending the stock market into a tailspin from which it has yet to recover.

Four days later, the House voted again and passed the bill.

What was the difference? Let Bee address that in a statement sent out by his campaign Oct. 3, the day the House voted yes:

“They added pork for wooden arrows, racetracks, rum, bicyclists and Hollywood studios to name a few. Our Congresswoman Giffords wouldn’t stand by and say ‘no!’ to the pork. She added her own.”

The Giffords’ “pork” cited by the Bee campaign was an extension of tax credits for those who install solar energy equipment. The Bee statement said “a real leader would have passed (the solar credit) months ago as part of an all-of-the-above energy package.”

Limbaugh leapt into the fray, seizing on the tax credits for makers of Puerto Rican rum and toy wooden arrows as proof the House had been bought off.

Meanwhile, Kyl was hearing the same things from Arizonans. “I had over 5,000 calls, letters and e-mails the week before,” Kyl said in an interview this week.

All of this prompted Kyl to send out a 2 1/2-page e-mail to those who contacted his office. In it, he wrote: “The tax bill had nothing to do with pork-barrel spending. In fact it included many provisions that would reduce taxes.”

The tax cuts and credits – including the solar credit – had been approved in the Senate earlier, Kyl said. They were waiting for approval in the House, and the financial bailout was the vehicle used for that.

Although criticism by Bee and Limbaugh of tax breaks for makers of rum and wooden arrows made for a good soundbite, there is more to it, Kyl wrote.

A 39-cent tax is imposed on each hunting arrow to help pay for hunting programs. The tax break exempted toy arrows.

Current tax law also imposes an excise tax on imported rum, probably to protect domestic rum makers. But that tax is refunded to rum makers in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico because they are U.S. territories. That has been the case since 1986, and the bailout bill provision continued that.

“There are some conservative House members who, I guess, couldn’t argue the bill on the merits,” Kyl said in an interview.

He said the House Republican Study Committee urged Republicans running for the House to attack Democratic incumbents by claiming the bailout was laden with pork. “I understand he was one of them,” Kyl said of Bee.

Bee’s statement said, “This bill . . . should not be about how much more pork-barrel spending you can get away with.”

“They clearly should have known better,” Kyl said of House members and candidates who sent out such statements. “Either they were grossly negligent or misinformed.”

Kyl said he heard about Bee’s statement and moved to knock it down. “His campaign guy had been quoted as calling it ‘pork,’ ” he said of Bee campaign manager Tom Dunn. Kyl said he called one of his staff members in Tucson “and said we need to straighten him (Dunn) out.”

Dunn said this week that the Bee campaign stands by the statement. “It’s special interests,” he said of the add-ons to the bailout bill.

Kyl begs to differ: “It’s not pork, and it’s not new.”

Mark Kimble appears Fridays on “Arizona Illustrated” on KUAT-TV, Channel 6. Call him at 573-4662 or e-mail mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com.

———

Download the document

Sen. Jon Kyl’s take on the bailout