Can Tucsonans afford greener power?

According to the latest decision of the Arizona Corporation Commission, effective Jan 1, 2009 TEP customers will pay nearly $5 a month extra just to get 2% of our electricity to be produced by renewable sources...... at this rate, it will cost ratepayers an extra $35 a month when it gets up to 15% renewable in a decade or so, a goal that is set in law.

I can afford that type of increase, but how about those on fixed incomes or the poor families?

Renewable energy may be a laudatory goal to many people, but APS can't find financing for its slated solar-thermal plant near Gila Bend, and we're not a great state for wind energy, either according to the wind power folks' own studies. Given our low rainfall and ongoing drought, even small-scale hydroelectric (no dams, just diversion of water in the stream to turbines) isn't very feasible

Arizona's cheapest electricity already comes from nuclear power. It doesn't pollute the air, and even those people alarmed about global warming see nuclear power as a good alternative to fossil fuels.

I think Arizona should expand its use. We have plenty of empty rural counties that could use the economic benefit of such plants, and nuclear power plants are a proven technology, a safe technology, and can be depended on 24/7. Nuclear power plants in the US have the best utilization rate of any electricity generation source - on-line and producing power 92% of the time. In contrast, wind is about 30% and solar around 50% or less.

As for the nuclear waste issue, there's two answers: 1/ The new president and the Congress need to stop stalling and get the repository at Yucca Flats in Nevada open and accepting shipments and 2/ We need to terminate the wrong-headed policy passed by Pres. Carter in 1977 of bannign the reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Reprocessing using new methods can prevent nuclear waste from being able to be used in weapons, plus it keeps the US from having to mine or import more uranium through being able to use the reprocessed fuel in nuclear power plants.

The Tucson City Council has clearly lost its way

A City Council that goes ahead and OKs Rio Nuevo bonds while cutting vital services like police and fire academy classes is a City Council that's clearly lost their way. It is as out of touch as those AIG execs that still held their conferences at luxury resorts after the bailout, or the Big 3 Auto CEOs who flew into Washington in Nov. on Learjets looking for a bailout.

Public safety is one of, if not, the most vital function of local gov't. Before you cut police and fire, a municipality should make every other cut possible to non-vital services. So why weren't things like Channel 12, Access Tucson, and numerous arts programs eliminated first? Those are nice to have, but not essential community services.

Cutting $1 million from new vehicle purchases is a step in the right direction, but let's not stop there. The city needs to integrate economy of scale into every aspect of its financial decision-making. In short, it must get into the habit of making sound economical decisions in every aspect of its purchasing that will pay continuing dividends adn create a culture of efficient purchasing and sound management of the public's money.

For example, when it buys new vehicles, it needs to buy the cheapest, most fuel-efficient vehicle that will get the job done, not the trendy but costly Prius, or the SUV that never goes off-road. I want to see city officials driving Civics, Cobalts, and Yarises, not Priuses and SUVs. You can buy 2 of these compacts for every Prius or SUV. Even at $5-6 a gallon, a Civic or Yaris has much lower life cycle costs than a Prius.

The U of AZ Regents are letting us down

I have a friend who got a full athletic scholarship and went to the U of AZ 20 yrs ago. In 1988 the U sent him a statement of tuition costs showing how valuable his scholarship was. He said tuition was $900 a year then. Now it's approaching 7 times that.

In other words, tuition is increasing at an average rate of about 35% per year for those 20 yrs, with most of the increase during the past 10 years and, specifically, during Napolitano's "education governor" administration. Even during the housing boom, prices weren't appreciating that fast for homes.

While the university can complain about the legislature's appropriations, the fact remains that new buildings have gone up everywhere over the past few years. I think the big problem is that we have an entire generation of administrators at all levels of gov't and academia who have never had to do crisis management, adhere to strict budgets, or determine and set priorities due to the generally robust economy of the past 20-25 years.

BTW, the scholarship program worked well in my friend's case, as he became a well-paid professional, and has returned a lot of income to the state through income and other taxes through his earnings.

We need a high-speed train, not a streetcar!

Tucson lives in the shadow of Phoenix, a city whose metro area is several times larger than Tucson's and which dominates Arizona and the entire Southwest. We need to make the presence of Phoenix an asset, not a liability. We can do that by building a true high speed rail link between Phoenix and Tucson.

We read last week how fewer and fewer airlines serve Tucson Int'l Airport. If we had a 200 mph+ train running on dedicated lines you could reach either city in under an hour, thereby permitting area residents and businesses to use Sky Harbor Airport easily.

Phoenix area businesses would open branches here if their employees could be whisked here inside of an hour. Even better, Phoenix businesses operating here would slowly raise the pay scales for the Tucson workforce.

Tourism would get a shot in the arm as visitors could fly into Sky Harbor instead of dealing with TIA, and visitors to the Phoenix area could easily add on trips to the Old Pueblo. Tucsonans could more easily visit Phoenix's many attractions.

Finally, there's two large groups that tend to either avoid driving or don't have vehicles: senior and college students. Such a link would enable them to travel to either city and patronize its various attractions and businesses.

The cost would be over $1 Billion, but the dividends would be huge, and expanding the highway wouldn't be much cheaper and not add any of the benefits I outlined above.

The downside of church sex challenges

It seems that hardly a week or two goes by without some mega-church or seeker-friendly church announcing some sort of sex challenge, complete with high-profile advertising.

While I certainly agree that sex is an important part of stable, monogamous marriages, including mine :), I think challenges of this sort can do more harm than good.

First, the pastor and other staffers are probably not equipped to perform sexual counseling for couples where complex issues are brought to the surface by these challenges.

Second, there are undoubtedly many people whose past sexual experiences prior to marriage were problematic. They haven't told their spouses and may be able only to have sex occasionally. Increasingly the frequency by the pressure of sex challenges may actually destabilize the marriage.

Third, it could encourage a spouse to make abusive sexual demands and color it under the guise of faith.

Fourth, giving this subject a high profile so it becomes a discussion subject among church members could encourage those who are sexually dissatisfied to locate others within the congregation, and actually aid and abet cheating on spouses.

What do you think?

Why the gov't shouldn't be involved in pro sports

As I digest the departure of the White Sox for Glendale in return for $5 million, as I understand it, there are no teams looking to relocate, so the White Sox promise to look for another team to come here is empty. Besides, what's the penalty? Nada.

And so much for airtight contracts with penalty clauses signed off on by the County Attorney. The Board settles for $5 million instead of the many millions more they owe on paper, and they downplay the financial impact of spring training, claiming now that it's minimal while previously they told us that it was a mighty economic engine worth millions and millions of dollars. Also,now that the county didn't litigate against the White Sox, the Rockies and D'Backs see the county as chumps and will slide on out of here relatively cheaply. As it is, the Phoenix papers are reporting that as soon as the decision was made by the Board of Supervisors, the Rockies and D-Backs were already working together to find a site that would work for both clubs.

Notice, too, that the Supervisors and County Attorney managed to get this decision delayed until AFTER the election.

Finally, Tucson has little to show for its forays into pro sports over the past 15 years. The elected officials and top administrators need to realize that this is predominantly a U of AZ sports town, and if the U of AZ offers the sport, people aren't going to patronize pro baseball, basketball, or hockey. TEP is the largest money pit around here apart from Rio Nuevo.

Memo to voters: Time to hold the elected officials behind these boondoggles accountable.

Reviving the Republican Party in the West

I combed through the presidential election results over the past few days and I made some very disturbing discoveries. First, not counting AZ, only two counties in the West (defined as the states of CA, OR, WA, ID, MT, WY, NM, CO, AZ. NV, UT) were more red this election cycle than in 2004. Even worse, compared to 2000, just 19 counties in the West were more red. In both 2000 and 2004, no urban county voted more Republican for president.

This should be especially disturbing to the GOP since the ticket had two Westerners running, plus it was thought that McCain's maverick stance and Palin's individuality and strong stance on guns and being a small business owner before entering politics would carry the ticket far in the West.

This decline can't be blamed on evangelicals staying home. They voted 75-25% for McCain, which is as strong or stronger showing as Bush rec'd in 2000 and 2004.

Here's some raw data to flesh out the Republican decline:

Blue Counties in 2000 in West: 72
Blue Counties in 2004 in West: 80
Blue Counties in 2008 in West: 126

Dark Blue Counties in West (Dark Blue means Dem Candidate won by 15% or more)

Dark Blues in 2000: 31
Dark Blues in 2004: 40
Dark Blues in 2008: 66

While the GOP was not going to win California under any circumstances, it's time to hit a panic button when reliably Republican counties like San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino voted for Obama and McCain/Palin just narrowly held onto Orange County.

The only states with a large number of counties voting more Republican now than in 2000 is OK, AR, and TN.

Why is the Republican Party in such decline here? I think the answer is that the Republican Party has forgotten the importance of good governance. The GOP historically stood for a strong defense, limited gov't, effective gov't, free markets, and certain social issues such as pro-life. Yet the Bush Admin. didn't handle the war in Iraq very well for several years; Afghanistan is in trouble; the bailouts are about to kill capitalism in order to save it; Katrina recovery was a mess; and earmarks and corruption lost the GOP majority in Congress in 2006.

While I understand that importance of the party's pro-life stance, it's not an election winner. McCain/Palin were strongly pro-life and presented a very dramatic contrast to Obama. Yet the election returns didn't show that it mattered much to the electorate-at-large or even in states with a large Catholic population.

I think the hope for the GOP lies in its governors. Its future presidential candidates should be governors who have kept taxes low, generated lots of good paying private sector jobs, emphasize education and keep state college tuitions low for state residents, and have proven crisis management skills in disasters, budget crunches, etc.