Congress is busy scaling back, even getting rid of welfare payments to folks like unemployed teen mothers and hungry schoolkids. But it’s also under pressure to restore benefits to a different class of beleaguered constituents–restaurant owners. Before the mid-1980s, businesses could deduct 100 percent of their meal costs, as long…
With Friends Like These . . . If you’re following the state legislative circus, you’re familiar with Senate Bill 1290, the so-called environmental audit bill. Environmentalists and other non-cranks have dubbed 1290 the Polluter Protection Act. It would allow corporations to escape prosecution for polluting, provided they disclose their misdeeds…
If you’ve never witnessed a 50-year-old Vandercook No. 232 Proof Press working at full-on, finger-crushing capacity, then you’ve never heard a noise like this: SKREE CHUNK KA-CHANK SKREE CHUNK KA-CHANK SKREE CHUNK KA-CHANK. And you’ve never seen the primitive, industrial sensuality of rollers, bearings, plates, wheels and belts moving in…
It’s the final round at the Doral-Ryder Open, and Gary McCord is scatting. His solo begins as Peter Jacobsen, the hottest player on the PGA Tour, eyes a putt on the 12th green. “He’s in that ever-present Zone that these guys get into once in a while,” the CBS golf…
Twenty-three years ago, Arizona lawmakers set up a trust fund for the state’s prisoners. The lawmakers’ idea was simple enough–profits generated from prison convenience stores, hobby shops and the prisoners’ telephone system would go into a Special Services Fund that would be held in trust by the Arizona Department of…
For 35 years, the gargantuan neon Roadrunner stood sentry over traffic on the Black Canyon Freeway. But one morning two weeks ago, stunned motorists stared in disbelief as they whizzed past the defunct truck stop at the northwest corner of I-17 and McDowell Road. The big beeper had flown the…
Fast. Extremely fast. Wide lanes. Deep gutters. No waves. Perfect water temperature. And most important: clean air. These are the physical attributes that separate an average swimming pool from a great one. There are only a handful of elite competitive swimming facilities in the United States. One of the best…
Pistol-Packin’ Emma The front door at Phoenix City Hall proclaims: “No weapons of any kind allowed in building.” But one city employee is packing heat–City Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood. Although she usually leaves her handgun in the car, Dirty Emma, who has a concealed-weapon permit, admits that she sometimes carries…
The whining from the leftish side of American politics seems to grow less intelligent and more ineffectual by the day, even to a veteran Nixon-Reagan-Bush hater like me. It’s as if the Democrats want to prove that Rush Limbaugh is right–that they actually are the party of politically correct minutiae…
The Gaddie family has been in the education business for decades. In the 1970s, members operated the John Hancock Academy in Mesa, teaching children back-to-basics that included phonics, morality and other conservative values. Later, they moved to higher education, operating the Mountain States Technical Institute to teach vocations like mechanics…
Nothing that’s happened in Lake Havasu City since March 13–the official beginning of spring break, MTV-style–came as much of a surprise to anyone. That’s not to say things were uneventful, though. A miniriot took place on the beach after shots were fired in a confrontation between a pistol-packing spring-breaker and…
You’ve got your Old Hollywood. And then you’ve got your Incipient Forest Lawn. Somewhere in between, you’ve got the stellar feeding trough known as Chasen’s restaurant, the 58-year-old Tinseltown phenomenon that will slam its reservation book shut for the final time this Saturday night. For anyone even remotely acquainted with…
Although People for the West–the antienvironmental “grassroots” lobby of the mining, ranching and logging industries–boasts more than 3,000 Arizona members, fewer than 200 showed up in Mesa last Saturday for the organization’s state convention. Most of the conventioneers were over 60, the sort of right-wingers who drive slowly in the…
You may not know Stella Gaudreau, but state Senate President John Greene and the 13,500-member Arizona State Bar sure do. Thanks in great measure to Gaudreau, it’s still not a crime to practice law without a license in Arizona. Senate Bill 1055, which could have made it a felony for…
Does your parks department need money to keep a recreation center open? Are your schools having trouble getting dropouts back to class? Not enough police to protect your neighborhood? No sweat. Call out the National Guard. The Arizona National Guard is diversifying. Programs that educate troubled kids, take kids to…
For He’s a Jolly Delinquent Fellow For a contribution of at least $1,000 to the Arizona State Bar Foundation, attorneys get an asterisk next to their names in the Bar’s phone directory. They also get the title “Bar Fellow.” If you don’t make good on your pledge, you don’t get…
Santos Jaco, a small man barely five feet, four inches tall, stands on his toes and peeks over the shoulder of a bearded norteamericano wearing a Maya-style woven pullover. Jaco is trying to see a detailed charcoal drawing hanging on the gallery wall. The drawing depicts corpses, men and women,…
From a bare frame, he created this bike. In his mind, he saw it come together. He looked to others for the freshest ideas. Out of patience and skill came beauty. But what, he wondered, does it take to win? The boy from the projects is scoping out his competition…
James “Rocky” Tang grew up in a South Phoenix neighborhood where nearby dairies provided fodder for the games he and his childhood friends used to play with cardboard milk caps. But the retired restaurateur was just as surprised as anyone else when the game made a comeback in the form…
The state Attorney General’s Office is investigating the Maricopa Community College District’s purchasing department for possibly violating state procurement and antitrust laws. Rich Brydle told New Times that he was fired by the college last August after recommending that a computer buyer be terminated for manipulating the bidding process on…
In recent months, government officials have challenged Arizona prison inmates’ rights to receive magazines like Playboy in the mail. The courts have upheld the prisoners’ rights. But it’s apparently a hollow victory for inmates at one state prison. According to inmates who say they witnessed the crime, employees at the…
Ollie, Ollie Oxen Free After Posting Bond Oliver Miller had a dubious homecoming when the Detroit Pistons flew in recently to play the Suns. A court hearing in his divorce had been scheduled to coincide with the visit: During that hearing, somebody pointed out that Ollie had an outstanding warrant…
