Mesa Repub Bob Worsley + His Shameful Tax Schemes

SHAME ON YOU Bob Worsley!

Once again today, dear readers, your MesaZona blogger is finding it hard to live up to his last name - mellow I am not.
For months now a group of 'highly-influential friends' referred to here as THE FOG, with disclosed and undisclosed real estate ownerships, family connections and/or overlapping business interests [some of whom hold onto elected political offices here in Mesa and the Arizona State House] have been playing their hands for their questionable own personal financial gains on the table of schemes gone-bad.

Most recently the taxpayers of Mesa REJECTED one of their campaigns back in November 2016. . .  that one involving the mayor and the ASU mascot Sparky used in a privately-financed $500,000 Public Relations stunt that back fired in a major screw-up.... Here they go again!  
For months now there's been another Pie-In-The-Sky scheme thrown together, cooked-up coining the phrase COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT DISTRICT, the subject of more than a few posts on this blog site:
March 6 THE PRICE IS RIGHT > Click here
March 4 KEEPING YOU INFORMED: Anyone here in Mesa Howling ... Click here
Feb 19 BEWARE: When Giles, The FOG, and Worsley Use The Phrase . . . Click here

Filling in some more details today from a non-profit group of actively engaged citizens and journalists, here are some excerpts that you are encouraged to read



Will another city spend tax money ....

Arizona Coyotes are banking on it

By Christian Britschgi  /   March 13, 2017  /   News  /   No Comments

Source: WatchDog.org
Earlier this year, Mesa Republican Sen. Bob Wolsey [seen at far right with friends] introduced legislation that would allow for the creation of a new type of taxing entity known as a community engagement district, in which tax revenue could be diverted to pay for the construction and maintenance of sports facilities that could also benefit him and the FOG here in Mesa - conflict of interest claims were widely published in media, including a number of posts on this blog site.

Arizona Senate President Steven Yarbrough and House Speaker John Mesnard, both Chandler Republicans are mentioned in this featured article. 

Under the proposed legislative trickery plan , a host city could opt to set up a CED, in which up to half of eligible state sales tax revenue — which typically would go to the state general fund — could be diverted to pay for construction of a sports facility. The CED would also gain the power to independently add an additional 2 percent surcharge.
The plan failed to gain traction at the tail end of the 2016 legislative session, but has since attracted the enthusiastic sponsorship of  Worsley, who dubiously claims that it keeps the team in Arizona without using state tax money. Instead, he says, it would “create new revenue, new jobs and new tax dollars where today none of that exists.” Also saying said he crafted the bill to be “location agnostic.”

Sean McCarthy, senior research analyst for the Arizona Tax Research Association, described the bill as “the least transparent way to provide a public subsidy to a team.”
Contrary to supporters’ claims that the bill would not touch state funds, McCarthy argues that the diversion of sales tax revenue from the general fund is in effect no different than using the tax code as a means of appropriating funds.
A Senate fact sheet on the bill acknowledges that it would have a negative fiscal impact on the state general fund, both from the diversion of funds and from any migration of economic activity from “from fully taxable areas to the CED.”
McCarthy also criticized the claim that a CED would produce economic growth, telling Watchdog that most of the activity associated with stadiums could be classified as commercial retail and that “moving commercial retail around does little to stimulate your economy.  You do nothing to change disposable income in an area.”
This squares pretty closely with the economic literature on sports facility subsidies, which has repeatedly found that they produce little in the way of economic benefits either for cities or the taxpayer.
Aside from fiscal conservatives, opposition is also percolating among Senate Democrats, and Yarbrough has told the Arizona Republic that it does not yet have the votes to pass.

 

Millenials So Bad . . . They're Different

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told the BBC this week that he blames millennials for the government’s secrets being leaked to the public.
“In order to do this kind of stuff, we have to recruit from a certain demographic,” he said, referring to government surveillance. 
Image to the left taken from March 7 2017 Issue of New York Magazine by George Packer

Can You Keep a Secret?

The former C.I.A. chief Michael Hayden on torture and transparency.

The former general, now in 'private practice' has come out of the shadows in a BBC video saying this:

“And I don’t mean to judge them at all, but this group of millennials and related groups simply have different understandings of the words loyalty, secrecy, and transparency than certainly my generation did.”
He specifically cited whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and speculated that whoever recently gave the CIA spy tool files to WikiLeaks was also likely a millennial.
“Culturally, they have different instincts than people who made the decision to hire them,” he said
Video on the source also > The Intercept
Hayden’s theory, however, doesn’t hold water.  

Whistleblowers and leakers have been a fact of life throughout United States history — and before its existence, too.
In 1772, Benjamin Franklin — born about 276 years too early to be a millennial — obtained letters from Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts, in which he mused about repressing the rights of colonists. Franklin leaked the letters, and they were used by the movement for independence to rile up the colonies against their British rulers.
It’s a tradition that has continued in generation after generation.
Consider Daniel Ellsberg, who was 40 when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, exposing widespread government deceit about the Vietnam War. Or Mark Felt, who was almost 60 when he helped formed the basis for the Watergate stories under the pseudonym “Deep Throat.”
To the extent that Hayden is right that millennials are different, it’s that younger people value privacy — the core issue behind Snowden’s leaks — more than older Americans.
A 2013 Pew poll found that millennials were more skeptical of government surveillance than any other age group — with 45 percent of millennials saying it was more important for the federal government to “not intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terror threats” than “to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy.”
Among those 65 years old and older, just 26 percent held that view.
A 2015 poll commissioned by the ACLU found that 56 percent of Americans between the ages of 18-29 had a favorable view of Snowden, while just 26 percent of those above the age of 55 shared that view.

Top photo: Students at the University of Washington join thousands protesting the election of Donald Trump in Seattle.

Now @ Falcon Field Here In Mesa: DEA General Aviation USA

DEA General Aviation: US distributor for Cicare helicopters
7 Mar, 17, Source: DEA
Cicaré Rotorcraft announced on the opening day of HAI Heli-Expo the appointment of DEAGA USA as its exclusive distributor for the Cicaré range of helicopters, including the revolutionary Cicaré SVH4 helicopter trainer in the US and North America. http://www.deagausa.net/

DEAGA USA will be responsible for sales, support, training and assembly of the Cicaré range of products in the USA.
The company is currently establishing a sales and product support organization at the company’s newly established base at Falcon Field here in Mesa, recently opening an office and hangar at Falcon Field where it intends to assemble and distribute the SVH-4, 7B, and ultimately other Cicaré models. 
It is also looking to establish strategic alliances to widen the reach in the USA for Cicaré SVH4 Trainer use.

The Cicaré SVH4 ground based helicopter trainer has also received FAA “approval for up to 10 hours towards the total Private Pilot flight training time requirement for Helicopters.”
DEAGA USA is a subsidiary of DEA General Aviation Holdings, a $1 billion publicly traded Chinese company with diversified aviation interests that include engine manufacturers Hirth and Mistral and aerobatic aircraft company XtremeAir.
DEA holds the distributorship for Cicaré helicopters in China, Southeast Asia and North America. Chinese customers already have ordered 48 SVH-4s, and deliveries should commence from Arizona within several months, the company said.
The price is estimated at approximately $150,000 each, and financing and leasing options likely will be available, a Deaga USA spokesman said.
DEA General Aviation Holdings Ltd’s global interests include the aerobatic aircraft manufacturer XtremeAir and rotary company Rotorschiemde as well as engine manufacturers Hirth and Mistral EnginesSee one of the helicopters in action > http://www.cicare.com.ar/en-index.html 
See the SVH4 in operation at: Video Preview Download:www.cicare.com.ar

Unfunded Liabilities > Changes to Public Sector Pension Plans

Making Informed Changes to Public Sector Pension Plans

March 10, 2017

Pensions play a critical role in the ability of local governments to attract and retain the workforce needed to meet citizen demands. The costs associated with this employee benefit, however, can be substantial.
A recent National League of Cities (NLC) survey revealed that over the past year the cost of pensions increased in more than 70 percent of cities.
One in three cities identified these expenses as the factor most negatively affecting their budgets - Mesa is one of these.
You can access and view the report > here

NLC’s latest Municipal Action Guide includes a historical look at public sector pension plans, an overview of approaches to pension reforms, and a worksheet to help local officials navigate decision-making regarding their city’s pension plan.

Pensions play a critical role in the ability of local governments to attract and retain the workforce needed to meet citizen demands. The costs associated with this employee benefit, however, can be substantial. NLC’s new report, Making Informed Choices about Public Sector Pension Plans, examines the reforms that cities have made in response to funding challenges and the impact of these changes. It also offers ways that local leaders can become more active and informed decision makers, regardless of whether their city or state runs their employees’ pension plan.
Pension funding took a big hit as the Great Recession in 2008 materialized. The recession had an added component – beyond its depth and length – that previous recessions did not: a nearly decade-long period of exceptionally low interest rates. This feature of the recession resulted in lower expected returns and therefore higher pension funding requirements. In response, many cities instituted reforms, resulting in improvements to public pension funding ratios.
As part of our annual City Fiscal Conditions report, NLC surveyed city finance officers about the reforms made to their plans since the recession, regardless of whether their city or the state administers the plan. The following is an overview of their responses:

City Pension Reforms, 2009-2016

Change	%
Increased employee contribution rate	33
Changed plan design	22
Reduced benefits	17
Reduced COLA	12
Increased eligibility requirements	8
Increased vesting period	7
Other

Read or download the full Municipal Action Guide, Making Informed Choices about Public Sector Pension Plans.

About the author: Christiana K. McFarland is NLC’s Research Director. Follow Christy on Twitter at @ckmcfarland.

Christiana McFarland

Research Director

Research

Center for City Solutions

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New Global Map = A Game-Changer

See Every Piece of Earth’s Surface Change With New Satellite Map

A huge trove of constantly updated data is now available to the public.

By Betsy Mason PUBLISHED March 10, 2017

Source: National Geographic

A new global map made of more than two million satellite images, updated monthly, is now yours to explore. Starting today, Earth-imaging company Planet Labs is launching a web portal to its huge database of photos of Earth, giving the public an unprecedented view of the planet’s ever-changing surface.

Using Planet Explorer Beta, you can see how any swath of land has changed over the last year, at monthly intervals. The company has built an automated system that sifts through millions of images collected by its satellites, selects the best ones, and stitches them together into a mosaic.

The entire globe is available at a resolution of 30 to 40 meters. The United States is available at three- to five-meter resolution—fine enough to pick out buildings, roads, even individual cars.
“This base map is a game changer,” says National Geographic cartographer Rosemary Wardley. “Having access to up-to-date imagery at such a high resolution is a tremendous asset to not only the field of cartography but for science as a whole.

“The ability to toggle and compare dates and filter the imagery based on differing categories is an example of how far the world of GIS has come in the past decade. Image processing that used to take up the bulk of our time can now be done with the click of a mouse.”

Since its founding in 2010, San Francisco–based Planet Labs has aimed to capture a new image of Earth—every piece of it—every day.

After launching 88 new satellites last month on an Indian rocket, the company now has 149 satellites in orbit, each just one foot long.
In three or four months, when the new additions to its fleet are fully operational, the company says there will be enough eyes on the planet to meet the goal of daily global coverage.

                    

 

 

Hitting A Financial Wall > Here in Mesa?

The Shape of Things to Come
March 10, 2017 by Johnny Sanphillippo                                   
Source and taking-off point : Strong Towns
When is Mesa Mayor John Giles gonna realize that this could be what NextMesa really is?
Communities are hitting a financial wall.
Current tax revenue is entirely insufficient to cover the ongoing maintenance of municipal infrastructure – and by “infrastructure” the writer of the source article mean public services and staffing levels as well as the physical roads, pipes, and civic buildings.
There simply isn’t enough productive private economic activity to support the underlaying public chassis that’s been built since World War II.

So we’re in for a great deal of deferred maintenance, failed pension obligations, reductions in services, higher taxes (which will be called “user fees” and “code enforcement”) and ultimately default on public debt.
That’s already baked into the 'budget pies'.
Action to deal with the $20+ Million unfunded liabilities and skyrocketing costs of pensions/benefits is getting put off until later at the same time the city is asking for 5% cuts in all departments ....yet it can spend about $800,000 for khaki pants and polo shirts? ... nothing' wrong about that, right?

Giles thinks getting into political office is 'like a marathon' --- whether or not this practicing personal injury/accident law attorney [usually referred to as 'ambulance chasers'] for the last 20+ knows what's ahead is open to some doubt when he constantly says in public that "Everything is great ...."

 



 

Why Worry Re/ World Wide Web ??

Just minutes ago Rhett Jones published this on Gizmodo
The Father of the World Wide Web Has Some Worries About His Baby
Yesterday was the 28th anniversary of the day that Tim Berners-Lee submitted his proposal for what would become the World Wide Web. In honor of the occasion, he published a letter outlining the biggest areas of its development that are doing him a frighten and warping his original vision.

 

Berners-Lee still directs the World Wide Web Consortium which develops open standards for the web. That gives him a tremendous amount of influence. But now that the web truly is world wide, governments and multi-billion dollar corporations hold most of the power. While a lot of the problems he points out aren’t at all knew, he says that he’s become “increasingly worried about three new trends” over the last 12 months.

Things that Tim is worried about:
1. The loss of control over personal data
2. It’s too easy for misinformation to spread on the web
3. Political advertising online needs transparency and understanding
Those are some real problems, indeed. They’ve all been part of a heated discussion. But what do we do about them? Tim’s not totally sure either but at least he does us the service of outlining some vague solutions that he’s leaning towards.

Things that Tim thinks we could do to solve the problems:
1. “Data pods” might be one way to give people more control over their personal information
2. Subscriptions and micropayments as a solution for publications and other ad-driven businesses. The idea seemingly being to disconnect the gold rush for traffic and the use of personal data for targeted marketing.

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3. Fighting government overreach through the courts, if necessary. (hint: it is and will forever be necessary.)

4. Push gatekeepers like Facebook and Google to “continue their efforts” to fight fake news without forming centralized determination of what is or isn’t true.
5. Greater transparency in the ways that algorithms are being used to influence our lives. He cites the Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Machine Learning set of principles as an example of how new standards could be determined.
6. Increased regulation of political campaign ads online to bring them up to the same standards required for other mediums like television and radio

Unfortunately, its difficult to see how to persuade those with the power to implement these solutions. Governments will do what they want, though continuous legal battles may hold the beast at bay in some countries. And many internet-focused corporations have built their entire business model around having exclusive personal data and using it efficiently.

Berners-Lee doesn’t necessarily seem naive enough to believe these problems will be solved soon and he says he’ll continue to work on the World Web Web foundation’s five-year strategy as a way of finding solutions.

His access to the most powerful players in tech and his general level of influence will likely be his best weapon in the fight. Convincing the titans of tech that they should stick to the philosophy of not being evil is the best hope for keeping the web alive